How do I export a chart in an image format from LibreOffice Calc?

[Alaukik]

I want to print some charts from LibreOffice Calc, is there a way to do this?

[stragu]

Here is the issue on Bugzilla:
https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=3
You can say that you are affected by this to try and push it to be fixed in the next release.

And here is a similar question in Ask LibreOffice:

Save a chart/graph as image in Calc?

Hello, In Micro$oft Excel, there is an option in the right click menu of a chart to save it as an image. Is there similar functionality in LibreOffice Calc? Right now I have to save my Calc document as *.xls, open it in Excel, then save my chart as an image that way, which is somewhat cumbersome to say the least. Thanks!

[horst]

The bug id=3 shows something completely different.

[stragu]

Sorry, the right link is: https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=30944
The fix is said to be targeted for LO 3.7, which should be out in February 2013.
Thanks for pointing this out!

[horst]

LO3.7 was renamed to LO 4.0. There you can right-click on chart and export graphic to many formats.

[PhoneixS]

With LibreOffice 4.0 and up (4.1) introduced a new option to save only the chart. You need to simply right click it and choose “Export as graphic”.

Note that 4.0 version have a bug that prevent you from save it as svg image, this was fixed in LibreOffice 4.1.

[TonyLocke]

This is the best answer, but I’d add that the chart must not be selected for the ‘export as…’ option to come up when you right-click.

[Hojju]

I found the quality of the chart line poor with this approach and needed to use the PDF export to get full quality.

[Pedro1]

A correction to bToasters answer: you don’t need to buy anything to get your charts in SVG (or even PNG, TIFF, etc). Just open your ODS file in Gnumeric, click on the Chart and Save as Image.

I hope one day LibreOffice will have this feature as well

[cloph]

copy, paste to draw, right-click → save as image (maybe paste special and explicitly select GDI Metafile)
However as the question was about printing: Those images have display resolution (dpi), so not really suitable for printing.
If you want to print, just export as PDF and print the PDF.

[PhoneixS]

Now in LibreOffice you can save a chart as svg, png, jpg, etc. You can update your answer

[Pedro1]

Using Calc you have only two options:

1. Select the chart, Copy and Paste to an image program (lousy quality)

or

2. Select the chart, Export as PDF, Selection, Lossless compression. Then from your PDF reader (I use PDF Xchange Viewer under Windows x86) export to PNG or whatever you prefer.

[LiboV]

I get the best quality using these steps:
Select your chart in Calc - copy it
Open (switch) to a Draw file - paste
Size the page appropriately - or - size the page for the graphic you want prior to pasting the chart and zoom the chart to fit:)

I also recommend the following extension -
Export As Images
– Export all the Impress slides or Draw pages as images of JPG, PNG, GIF, BMP and TIFF format.

[Marce1]

I would like to expand LiboV’s answer a little:

1. In Calc, left-click once on the chart to select it.
2. Right-click and select “Position and Size…”
3. Write down the values of Width and Height for the chart.
4. Open a new drawing in Draw (from Calc select File > New > Drawing).
5. In Draw, select Format > Page…, and set all margins to zero. Then, in the Paper Format section, select “user” as Format, and set the page Width and Height to the values of the chart.
6. Go to the Calc window, select the chart and copy it.
7. Go back to the Draw window and paste the chart. It should occupy the whole page.
8. Now you can export the drawing (File > Export…) to several different formats. You can even choose a vector format if that is the best option for later use.

Note: I haven’t tried all the export formats, but in my tests this worked well with PNG (bitmap) and SVG (vector).

[bToasters]

Drawing off of Pedro’s answer: If you go the copy-and-paste route, do the following steps.

1. Generate your chart
2. Make it as big as you can fit it on your screen.
3. Right Click → Copy
4. Open up Paint/GIMP/etc and paste it in.
5. Resize it as you need, and save it as a PNG file in there.

If you make it really big first, LO will copy as much of the data as it possibly can. This will result in a better looking image. Unfortunately, from what I can tell, LO doesn’t have an “export graph” feature yet.

If you need a super high-quality SVG-type graph of your data, maybe look into Wolfram|Alpha Pro. I believe it costs $3/month (for students), but you can plug your data into it, and it’ll let you download a very high-quality chart of your data. This would only be for professional needs, however; a copy-and-paste export like Pedro outlined above would suffice for most usage.

[stragu]

Just a little contribution:

While waiting for a fix, I found that the best way to do this for me (in order to use Calc charts in other documents) was to install a good screenshot app (Shutter is by far the best for Linux) that lets you select a part of the screen.

I then “Page Preview” my spreadsheet in Calc, select “Selection” in Shutter, and select the chart I want. It is directly added to the clipboard, which makes it easy to add in another document, or save in a folder.

Hope this helps!

[zzapper]

(can’t upvote yet) A screengrab is my preferred solution in a lot of apps as what you see is what you get! I wouldn’t see that as a poor-mans solution.

[kayn]

Easy way is to use Print Screen and e.g. http://pixlr.com/editor/ as a editor