What can you do if you want to create a chart but the values you have differ by an order of magnitude or more? If you use the standard column or bar graph, you risk the smaller values being virtually invisible because the chart is scaled to show the large values. In my customized workshops…
Category: Linking & Incorporating Other Content
How one character in a file name can mess up linking Excel cells or graphs to a PowerPoint slide
I recently had someone contact me asking why the linking between Excel and PowerPoint was not working properly. They had followed my advice in this article & video but it wasn’t working properly. Let me explain the scenario, what I discovered the problem was, and the solution that shows how changing one character in the…
Matching Excel charts to a PowerPoint color scheme; Issue #434 March 5 2019
If you create a graph in Excel, how do you get the colors to match the organization’s PowerPoint template? The two most common approaches are: 1) spend time typing in the RGB values for the correct colors into Excel for every graph, or 2) ignore the desire to make the colors match because of the…
Alternative to Excel conditional formatting; Issue #389 May 16, 2017
Excel has a great feature called conditional formatting that can save you time in making the results of analysis more visual. In particular, Excel can automatically add an up or down triangle to cells depending on their value. This makes reporting on the difference between a current and previous period value more visual. Here is…
Using published research results; Issue #385 March 21, 2017
One of the most powerful pieces of supporting information you can use to provide proof of a point you are making is to use a visual created as part of research from a government agency, industry group, or private research firm. These qualified, independent sources provide third-party support to the point we want to make…
Extracting data from a linked Excel graph; Issue #367 July 5, 2016
When I work on the slide makeovers for my customized workshops, I often run into graphs that can be formatted in PowerPoint, but the data can’t be accessed. This is common because when you use the default paste (Ctrl+V) to paste an Excel graph into PowerPoint, you get a graph that has the data linked…
Breaking links to Excel; Issue #359 March 15, 2016
Many professionals use Excel to do analysis and then want to present the results of that analysis in a PowerPoint presentation. There are a number of different methods for including Excel data in PowerPoint. Some insert the Excel table or graph as an image, some insert them as a PowerPoint object, and some insert an…
Fixing the Excel Rounding Error; Issue #329 January 20, 2015
When an executive sees a calculation error on your slide, how does it affect their view of the information you are presenting? It makes them question all the other data and analysis you did. But you checked your analysis and it is correct, so why is there an error on your slides? That’s what I…
Updates to the PowerPoint Document Inspector may save your job
One of the big issues with copying cells or graphs from Excel into PowerPoint is that some of the common methods actually embed the Excel workbook into the PowerPoint file. This is a concern for two reasons. First, it makes your PowerPoint file larger, and second, it exposes all the data in the entire workbook,…
2 Big Mistakes Professionals make using Excel data in PowerPoint
After you view these slides, read this page with advice on presenting financial information effectively. [sc:slideshare_2BigMistakes ]