exporting numbers 09 to excel with photos in spreadsheet

When I export my numbers spreadsheet with photos in the column the photos do not transfer when I import it into excel. How can I do this?

There are two ways that an image can exist in Numbers.app, to my knowledge:

1. Within a cell (in a table) - here, the cell has an "Image Fill";
2. "On top of" the table.

Excel doesn't support option 1.

If you drag an image file into a Numbers spreadsheet, you'll get option 1: the image will be inserted within a cell.

Instead, in Numbers, use the Insert > Choose… menu and select the image file. You'll then get option 2, which is correctly exported to .xls format in my limited testing.

I exported to PDF, and then use the "Export to Excel" function in the Adobe Acrobat app to convert the PDF back into Excel. It preserved the image fill nicely.

Note that Adobe Acrobat is a paid app that's part of the Adobe Suite subscriptions.