need efficient method for displaying images in Excel via drop down menu (large image set)

Hello all,

I've been trying to solve an issue on my own for about a week now but without luck yet...

I'm trying to create a product catalog in Excel. There are 12 product categories, each with numerous products (a few hundred in total).

From this I need to create numerous "packages" of products (let's say 3-5) that would include just one item from each of the 12 product categories. For this I need to display the product image for the product selected. I'm using drop down menus to make each product choice.

The ultimate goal is to create a professional-looking bid presentation that can be sent to potential clients.

I can make this work in general - and this forum has been quite helpful to that end. However, this big issue at hand is that it seems that no matter which approach I take my model becomes extremely slow... I need to create something that is as efficient as possible to operate.

I've tried the "Picture Link" method, the "comment image" method, and a few VBA options I've found (which got me close but needed some modification). I've not yet tried any type of external image database solution (and not sure if that would even help).

I could go on with details or include sample files, but I suppose for the moment the best thing may be to stop here and reply to specific questions rather than just rambling with possibly irrelevant info.

Perhaps there are one or more kind souls who would be willing to lend a hand, and we can go from there... )

Thanks buran. Yes, the final presentation will be a fixed pdf. The presentation will be part of the model; I will "Save As" / "PDF" the presentation tab to create that.

I will look into both the ActiveX and webbrowser control options.

One issue of note - currently the images are all copied into an existing Excel file. In other words, at present I do not have access to all of the image files in a separate folder. If need be, I can gain access to those images, or recreate them myself as standalone jpg files and house them in a folder on my computer or elsewhere, i.e. "the cloud" if/as needed.