Do you want to save your Google Sheets chart as an image?

A chart only exists within the spreadsheet file where it’s created. However, charts are often created for wider consumption which necessitates that they exist outside the spreadsheet.

You may want to use a single chart on multiple platforms. And to do this, you will need to save it to your machine as an image.

This post will show you really simple ways you can save a chart as an image.

Save Chart as Image with Chart Download

Charts in Google Sheets come with an option to download.

To download a chart,

1. Click on the three dots in the top right-hand corner of the chart.
2. Click on the Download option.
3. Choose the file format for the image.

After downloading the image, go to the directory of the downloaded files on your computer to view the image.

Save Chart as Image with Publish the Chart

Alternatively, you can download a chart as an image by first publishing it to the web.

Saving a chart image this way produces a better image resolution unlike when you download it directly using the first method.

As such, this is a preferred option If you intend to use the image for presentation on a wider screen.

The steps involved to publish a chart are as follow.

1. Click on the three dots in the top right-hand corner of the chart.
2. Select the Publish the chart option.

3. In the Publish to the web window that now appears, click on the Interactive dropdown to change the option. When you set this option to Interactive, users can move their cursor around on the chart to view more detail. Move to step 4 if you don’t want to share only a snapshot of the chart.

4. Select the Image option.

5. Click on the Published content and settings and select the None dropdown to choose what part of the spreadsheet you want to share.

5. From the dropdown, find the title of the chart you want to share. Here, our chart title is 2019, 2020, and 2021.
6. Click on Publish when you’re done.

7. After clicking on Publish, a prompt appears on your browser. Select OK to proceed.

8. After completing the previous step, a link is generated. Copy and paste the link to a new tab in your browser to open.

9. When the link finishes loading, it will display an image of the chart. Right-click on the image and select the Save image as option.

This will open your download files directly where you can rename the chart and save it in PNG format.

After downloading the image, you can choose to stop publishing the chart by clicking on the Published content and setting dropdown, and selecting the Stop publishing option.

Save Chart as Image with Snip & Sketch Keyboard Shortcut

Any keyboard shortcut solution often eases the process of doing things in the spreadsheet and this one is no different.

If you want to cut out all the steps involved in the previous methods, you can use this simple keyboard shortcut to save a chart as an image.

Win (Windows key) + Shift + S

This shortcut will activate the rectangular snip feature on windows which you can then use to take a screenshot of the chart you want to save.

The screenshot is saved to your clipboard, so you can paste it into a word document file or a slide presentation document.

Whichever location you choose to paste the screenshot, right-click on the image and select Save as Picture to save the chart on your computer.

Alternatively, you can go to the notification area on your computer and click on the image.

The screenshot will open in the Snip & Sketch program where you can save it to your computer by clicking on the Save icon.

Conclusions

You can save a chart as an image using any of these methods described.

You can download the chart using the download option from the three dots in the top right-hand corner of the chart or publish the chart to the web for better image quality.

However, the Snip and Sketch shortcut offers a much easier and quicker alternative to save a chart as an image.

Do you know other methods for saving a chart as an image? Let me know in the comments section.