Excel Paste as Image Issue

When you Paste as Picture from Excel, instead of pasting just the visible cell range, Excel creates a large bounding box that covers the entire original sheet area (with your selected cells anchored at the top left). That’s why you always have to crop away the empty white/transparent region.

This usually indicates a rendering bug or setting issue in Excel. Here are several fixes/workarounds you can try: 

 1. Use “Copy as Picture” instead of Paste Special → Picture

• Select your cells.
• Go to Home > Copy > drop-down > Copy as Picture…
• In the dialog, choose:
• As shown on screen
• Picture
• Paste into PowerPoint/Excel → this usually avoids the oversized bounding box problem.

 2. Disable hardware graphics acceleration

Sometimes the oversized paste box comes from Excel’s graphics engine.

• Go to File > Options > Advanced > Display
• Check Disable hardware graphics acceleration
• Restart Excel and test again.

 3. Paste using “Picture (Enhanced Metafile)”

• Instead of “Picture (U)” or bitmap, try Picture (Enhanced Metafile) in Paste Special.
• This usually creates a tighter bounding box around the selection.

 4. Try pasting into PowerPoint with “Keep Source Formatting”

• In PowerPoint, instead of directly pasting as a picture, paste normally → then choose Paste Options > Picture. Sometimes PowerPoint crops better than Excel’s native paste.

 5. Update or Repair Office

This is sometimes a known bug in certain Office 365 builds. If nothing works:

• Run Office → Account → Update Options → Update Now.
• If already updated, try a Quick Repair or Online Repair.

The most reliable fix is using “Copy as Picture” (Home → Copy → Copy as Picture) instead of Paste Special → Picture. That should give you exactly the cropped range with no extra whitespace.

My answers are voluntary and without guarantee!

Hope this will help you.

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