If you make charts in Excel on a Mac, you’ve probably run into the challenge of getting them out of Excel and saved as a free-standing, high-resolution image. Maybe you’ve tried using Excel’s “Save as Picture” option, which just gives you a small, low-resolution that looks fine as a thumbnail but terrible as soon as you increase the size so that anyone can see it.
For years, my workaround was a manual dance that actually works really well–and was detailed in a 2020 blog post that is still one of the most popular on this site. Copy the chart, open the Preview app, create a new file from the clipboard (Cmd+N), change the format to PNG, bump the resolution up to 300 or 600 DPI, name it, and save. The reason this produces a genuinely crisp image is that when you copy a chart in Excel on a Mac, the clipboard holds a vector version of it. The Preview app then re-renders that vector data fresh at whatever resolution you ask for, so you get sharp text, clean lines, and crisp markers instead of a blurry bitmap. (The Windows version of Excel has its own built-in export function.)
The catch is that it’s a lot of clicks, every single time. So, with the help of AI, I built a little tool to do the whole thing in two clicks, and I’m sharing it here in case it saves you the same hassle.
What it does
Using this tool, you copy a chart in Excel (Cmd+C), double-click a button on your desktop, type a file name and a resolution, and a high-resolution PNG lands on your desktop. That’s it. Under the hood it does exactly what the Preview method does: It grabs the vector PDF off the clipboard and rasterizes it at the DPI you choose.
It uses only tools that are already built into macOS, so there’s nothing extra to install and no admin password required. Everything it sets up lives in your own home folder.
If you’d like to customize the icon, select the file and press Cmd+I to open the Get Info window. For a quick swap, drag a PNG onto the small icon in the top-left corner. For a cleaner result that masks the corners like a proper macOS icon, open the PNG in Preview, choose Edit → Select All, then Edit → Copy, click the highlighted icon in the Get Info window, and paste with Cmd+V. If you want, you can grab the one I made.
How to get it
The tool comes as a disk image (a .dmg file). Download it, double-click to open it, and run the installer inside. Because it’s a free tool and I haven’t paid Apple for a developer certificate, the first time you run it macOS will likely warn you that it can’t verify the developer, so you’ll need to adjust some of the privacy settings: System Settings → Privacy & Security → “Open Anyway” (the included README walks you through this one-time approval step as well).
For anyone who is understandably wary of running a downloaded file, I’ve also included a fully manual set of steps in the Readme file. Every command is printed out so you can read exactly what it does and paste it in yourself. Nothing is hidden, and your own machine compiles the small helper from source you can see.
One more thing you might see: on a Mac that has never been used for any programming, macOS may pop up a one-time request to install Apple’s free “Command Line Tools,” which the installer uses to build its small helper. If that appears, just click “Install,” wait a few minutes, and re-run the installer. Most Macs that have done any development work already have this and won’t be asked.
A note on resolution
300 DPI is great for most uses, including in documents, the web (PNG images), and slides. If you’re going to print, 600 DPI gives you extra headroom. The tool lets you pick each time, so you’re not locked into one setting.
One thing worth knowing: the final image’s sharpness depends on the chart being copied as vector data, which Excel does automatically when you select the whole chart and copy it. So make sure the entire chart is selected (you’ll see the border around it) before you hit Cmd+C.
Why I made it
I do a lot of work in Excel, including my book Data Visualization in Excel, and getting charts out of Excel on the Mac at presentation quality has always been one of those small, recurring frictions that adds up. Tools like this don’t change the world, but they remove the serial clicking that wastes time and hurts your wrist. Plus, the new AI tools are making the construction of these kinds of tools much faster and easier. I figured I’d spend a few minutes making my (Excel) life easier and share it with you so you can enjoy the same benefits.
This tool is provided free and as-is, with no warranty. Use it at your own risk, and keep backups of your important files as you would with any software. Full details are in the included README file.
