Advanced Spreadsheets and Reporting Documentation
Index

Image Regions

An image region draws a picture stored in Business Central over a rectangle of the sheet: the company logo from Company Information, an item's picture, an employee's photo, a customer's image. The picture comes from a Blob, Media or MediaSet field of the first record the region's filters leave — and because the filters accept [Address] references, a picture can follow a slicer: pick an item in a ?FIELD cell and its picture appears.

Like charts and KPI cards, the region fills its whole rectangle and is drawn after everything else has calculated, so the slicer picks its filters read are final. It shows in the editor, in preview, in print and in template snapshots alike.

Setup

Field Meaning
Range The rectangle the picture is drawn over, for example B2:E8. A single cell gives a 4×4 rectangle.
Color The colour of the region's badge and outline in the editor. The picture itself is never tinted; in preview the outline disappears.
Table No. The table holding the picture: Company Information (Picture), Item (Picture), Employee (Image), Customer / Vendor (Image), Resource, Contact, or any table with a picture field.
Company The company whose record holds the picture — another company's logo from its Company Information, for example. Blank reads the company you are working in; accepts [Address]. See Reading Another Company.
Picture Field The Blob, Media or MediaSet field to read. Type its name or caption, or pick it with the lookup — the picker lists only the table's picture-capable fields.
Filters The filters that pick the record, as a table view. The AssistEdit button opens the view builder. The first record the filters leave supplies the picture, so make them isolate one record. Blank shows the table's first record — fine for single-row tables like Company Information.
Fit How the picture meets a rectangle of another shape — see below. Default Contain.

The setup dialog shows a summary of what the settings read. The picture itself only exists on the sheet — with [Address] references it cannot be resolved inside a dialog.

Fit

Fit The rectangle shows
Contain The whole picture, centred, with blank margins where the shapes differ. The choice for logos.
Cover The picture scaled to fill the rectangle, the overflow cropped evenly on both sides. The choice for photos and banners.
Stretch The picture stretched to both axes — distorted when the shapes differ.

The rectangle follows the actual cell sizes, including columns and rows you have resized, so the same picture can be a wide banner in one place and a square thumbnail in another.

What Counts as a Picture

The region reads the field's content and checks it for an image signature: PNG, JPEG, GIF, BMP, WebP, ICO and SVG are shown. A blob holding something else — a report layout, a Word document, a text file — renders the region's error badge instead of garbage. Media and MediaSet fields go through the tenant media store, whose MIME type stands in for formats the signature check does not know. For a MediaSet, the first picture of the set is shown.

Pictures larger than 4 MB are refused: the picture travels inside the sheet state on every load, so a poster-size photo would slow every recalculation.

Worked Examples

The company logo on a dashboard header

Field Value
Range K1:M3
Table No. 79 — Company Information
Picture Field Picture
Filters (blank — the table has one record)
Fit Contain

The picture of the item a slicer picks

C2 holds the slicer ?FIELD(Item, No., Description)-> — the user picks an item, the cell shows its description, filters reading the cell get the number.

Field Value
Range B4:D10
Table No. 27 — Item
Picture Field Picture
Filters WHERE(No.=FILTER([C2]))
Fit Contain

Every pick recalculates the sheet; the region reads the new item's picture. An item without a picture shows an error badge naming the item, which is usually what you want to know.

An employee photo beside their figures

Field Value
Range B2:C6
Table No. 5200 — Employee
Picture Field Image
Filters WHERE(No.=FILTER([B1])) with a ?FIELD(Employee, No., Search Name) slicer in B1
Fit Cover

Refresh Behaviour

Reading and encoding a picture on every recalculation is not free, so the region caches its result: the picture is re-read when a setting, the rectangle or a referenced [Address] cell changes, or via the refresh button beside the region badge. Replacing a picture in Business Central while the sheet is open therefore needs a click on that button.