Add plotted figures to existing excel file

[Vu-Nguyen-HAC]

Is there anyway to add plotted figures to existing excel file?

I would like to read data from excel file, plot figure by Julia and then put the plotted figure back to that excel file. What could I do for this purpose?

[felipenoris]

This is currently not supported.

[felipenoris]

What you can do is to create an Excel template file and use Julia just to edit the file and update the data.

[TimG1964]

I think there are three other ways this might be achieved, one of which (the least useful, unfortunately) is potentially possible today - although I haven't actually tried this. The other two would require some work and I haven't tried to scope this realistically yet.

• There is a formula in recent versions of Excel called image that allows an image to be inserted into a cell. The image must be reachable from a URL. If you had a static image of a chart (or anything else) that was available on a website, for example, you could include it using this function in a formula. I think it is possible this might work today although I admit it is not very useful for the purpose requested here.
• It would be possible to add functionality to include a static image as an "overlay" to a sheet, and this could include any arbitrary Julia plot produced into an appropriate format. This is not trivial to achieve but would be reasonably straightforward.
• It would also be possible to add full support for all of Excel's native chart making capability. This would be a considerable undertaking, I think, given the flexibility of chart making in Excel, so may best be developed in stages.

I haven't even begun to make plans for either of the second two options.

[TimG1964]

Latest commit (563b700) makes it possible to add any png, jpg or gif image to a worksheet from file or io.

Here is a simple example:

using CairoMakie, XLSX

f=opentemplate("Example_add_chart.xlsx")
table = XLSX.gettable(f[1])
x = 1:length(table.data[1])

fig = Figure()
ax = Axis(fig[1, 1], xticks=(x, table.data[1]))
barplot!(ax, x, table.data[2])

# Write PNG to IOBuffer
io = IOBuffer()
show(io, MIME("image/png"), fig)

XLSX.addImage(f[1], "D2:H12", io)

XLSX.writexlsx("Example_add_chart_out.xlsx", f, overwrite=true)

The image is, of course, static and will not update if the cells are updated in Excel.

I think this meets the original request, so closing now.