Inkscape doesn't seem to support charts or tables, so what's the best way to create a chart/table and import it into Inkscape? Excel 2013 unfortunately doesn't seem to support svg.
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1What is the end result you are looking for? An SVG based chart? For print or web?– DA01Commented Sep 5, 2013 at 22:15
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To make charts and tables for PDFs, presentations, or videos. It seems like svg would be the best way to create graphics since I could easily adjust the size when needed... Although I'm not a graphics guy so I could be wrong.– WhodatCommented Sep 6, 2013 at 11:50
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Well, do note that a table created as a SVG is going to lose it's "Structure" in the sense of semantics and accessibility. That may or may not be an issue for you, but if the PDF is for web distribution, for example, an SVG based PDF will be less accessible than a Table-based (HTML or Word) based PDF. However, for video, that's not really an issue at all. The biggest challenge with making a table in inkscape is that inkscape doesn't have a table tool. So everything has to be hand drawn.– DA01Commented Sep 6, 2013 at 15:21
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This worked for me: create a rectangle, then select it and go to Path > Path effects.. and then select Grid. That's all.– tirenwebCommented Jan 12 at 11:15
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7 Answers
@Yisela recommends Gnumeric. I would also recommend looking at LibreOffice.
What I've done in the past is:
- Create my tables in LibreOffice Writer, applying formatting such as row borders, cell spacing, and so on.
- Copy the table, open up LibreOffice Draw, and paste the table as a "LibreOffice Text Document" using "Paste Special".
- Select just the table.
- Go to File > Export and export in your preferred vector format (in the past, I've used EPS without any problems). Be sure to check the box that says "selection" otherwise Draw will export the whole page.
A similar approach can be taken with charts.
If you prefer to stick with Excel, at least for the charts part, you can install the "Save as PDF" office add-on and select your charts as PDF files which you can open just fine in Inkscape.
For both of these options, most of the actual content editing would take place in LibreOffice or Excel. Inkscape would really be for fine-tuning the output.
Finally, if you're working on a project that needs lots of tables and charts, you might want to invest some time in learning a programming language like R, with which you can generate publication quality charts and tables quite easily.
answered Sep 6, 2013 at 4:26
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I think you win! I searched all over for importing excel charts to inkscape and nothing I found worked. They actually have a save as PDF option in excel 2013 that seems to work best for me. Thanks!– WhodatCommented Sep 6, 2013 at 12:06
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1The LibreOffice Writer > Draw > SVG Export workflow works like a spell! You can also add Calc to the equation, but mind that you need to use Paste Special > Formatted Text (RTF) in order to copy the actual table (not a Calc object) into the Writer document.– s.dCommented Mar 31, 2017 at 12:57
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1Thanks! (been using PDF. & SVG) SVG output can work from Draw as well (better formatted with line thickness, though this was largely due to source formatting), but with both EPS and SVG output I had a issue where for each line in each cell it would add small base64 encoded images as a background (?) i.sstatic.net/FGgFs.png. Removing these (
data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAA....) using a regular expression fixed the formatting (transparent background needed), and drastically reduced the file size (from 11 megabytes to 200kilobytes).– WilfCommented May 31, 2017 at 13:15
Since you mention Excel, something you could do is use Gnumeric to import your .xls files into it, and from there export them as SVG. Unlike Excel, Gnumeric has more export options that would allow you to create more complex elements without having to actually draw them on Inkscape.
There is also an extension for Inkscape called NiceCharts that is good for creating basic pie and bar charts. It hasn't been updated since 2012, but it seems to be working nicely.
Other options are Gnuplot (a command line - with several frontends - driven interactive data and function plotting tool has SVG output for graphs & charts) and Matplotlib (a python plotting library and can also output SVG). Finally, SVG charter is a perl script dedicated to generate SVG charts on web servers.
For diagrams, Graphviz can produce structural information as diagrams of abstract graphs and networks in SVG and other vector formats.
Here's simple way to create table in Inkscape.... First, create rectangle with desired dimension. Then, underMenu>Edit choose Clone,then forward to Create tiled clones. Here you can set number of columns and rows.Click create or hit Enter.Your table is created.After, simply change the size of cells,play a little....To mention, this is not as good slution like creating in excell, but for something simple fair enough....
Because I needed that, I've just created a small online tool generating a piechart in svg: github/svg piechart online. Later you can edit it with Inkscape opening the SVG file created.
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Hi Remmel, welcome to the site! Awesome tool. Would you mind fleshing out your answer a bit, perhaps explaining how someone could edit this with Inkscape in case any beginners might be clueless?– JohnBCommented Aug 12, 2015 at 14:04
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That tool creates SVG file which is the same kind of file used by Inkscape. Thus you'll need using the web based tool to export into SVG the piechart and later to open it with Inkscape Commented Aug 20, 2015 at 11:18
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The page loads, but clicking the button doesn't seem to do anything... Commented Apr 14, 2016 at 9:28
visit https://sourceforge.net/projects/inkscape-tables/files/inkscape-table-1.0.tar.gz/download
Download inkscape tables python script; install as extension in inkscape: To install in debian unpack the tar.gz file using foo$: tar -zvxf filename.tar.gz open the unpacked directory. open a terminal window in that directory and install using // sudo ./install
the script will auto install and the Tables option will be visible in inkscape Extension Menu
LatexIt, a component of MacTex distribution, is also a quick way to generate tables in image format, and then import into Inkscape. This is an alternative to using a spreadsheet software.
Since this issue is not solved (in September 2018) I would suggest my solution which was inspired by @Ananda Mahto. Her solution did not work for me although my needs were quite simple (a couple of tables filled with results).
So I followed these steps:
- I used LibreOffice to create the tables and decorate them as desired.
- Exported the document to pdf.
- Imported that pdf to inkscape to have a base to work with.
Since inkscape support for pdf has improved over the years with the above approach I can get editable tables in my inkscape. Surely it's not integrated into the actual program but it's the best solution I came up with.
