Latest posts

Below are the most recent articles or resources I’ve published. If you are looking for help on a specific topics, it would best to look at the topics in my Articles archive as I have grouped my recent and best articles by topic there.

  • Improving some graphs from Copyblogger’s State of Native Advertising report

    I follow copyblogger.com because I find their information useful to my business. Yesterday they released a report on the state of native advertising (here is the full report). It doesn’t matter whether you know what that is (I didn’t initially). I want to explain why two of the graphs showing the results of their survey…… Continue reading

  • Linking a graph in PowerPoint to the Excel data so the graph can automatically update when the Excel worksheet changes

    You probably arrived at this page because you are a business professional who has to present regularly to management or executives on analysis you have done in Excel. You don’t want to have to retype a table of numbers or recreate a graph in PowerPoint. Not only is that time you don’t have, but it…… Continue reading

  • Waterfall Graphs; Issue #308 April 1, 2014

    One of the examples you see in this video on what people will learn in my workshops on presenting financial and operational data to executives, is a waterfall graph being used to show the components of the change between a starting value and an ending value. After I showed an example of a waterfall graph…… Continue reading

  • City A.M. March 24, 2014

    Dave’s Annoying PowerPoint survey and calculation of how much poor PowerPoint presentations cost organizations is used in this article titled “Four presentation mistakes to avoid” in City A.M. (UK) Continue reading

  • Using Excel Data in a PowerPoint Presentation

    Since the topic of presenting financial or operational data calculated in Excel is so popular, I put together this page to bring together my best articles and resources to help professionals use Excel data in a PowerPoint presentation. Continue reading

  • Numbers only measure a story; Issue #307 March 18, 2014

    Why do presenters use so many spreadsheets and tables of numbers in their presentations? The answer I get from participants in my workshops is that the numbers and analysis are important. The audience needs to see all the numbers. In this article I want to explain why I think that the numbers are not as…… Continue reading

  • Make Numbers Visual; Issue #306 March 4, 2014

    Last fall at the Presentation Summit conference, I started to evolve my focus, even though I didn’t realize it at the time. I have come to realize that how I help presenters the best is to show them how to make the numbers in their presentations visual. To take the spreadsheets, tables, and overly complex…… Continue reading

  • 3 big mistakes professionals make when presenting financial or operational data to executives

    After you browse through the slides below, check out this curated collection of resources on Using Excel Data in PowerPoint Presentations. [sc:slideshare_3BigMistakes ] Continue reading

  • How to automatically play a Vimeo or YouTube video full screen in a browser from a PowerPoint slide

    Some vimeo.com videos have a download link that allows you to download the video as a file on your computer. If this is the case, use the normal method for inserting a local video file. YouTube videos do not have a download link (you may be able to download the video file from youtube by…… Continue reading

  • Are your slides Re-Tweetable?; Issue #305 February 18, 2014

    What does Twitter have to do with effective slides in your PowerPoint presentation? A lot more than you think. This occurred to me last week as I was helping a client prepare a presentation for an upcoming investor conference. Twitter gives us an interesting way to measure how much of an impact a message makes…… Continue reading