New features in PowerPoint 2007's can help you create charts that are much more sophisticated and attractive than you could create in earlier versions of PowerPoint.
A well-drawn chart turns columns of numbers into something that can be more
easily read and understood. Using charts in a PowerPoint presentation makes it
easier for your audience to draw inferences from your data, which can help them
to better understand the concepts you are presenting. PowerPoint 2007 has
several new tools for working with charts that can help you create professional,
eye-catching charts for any presentation.
You have two options when
placing a chart in PowerPoint presentation. One is to bring data in from another
source such as an Excel worksheet and the other is to create the data inside
PowerPoint itself.
»
Copying a
Chart from Excel
To bring data in from an
external Excel worksheet, open the Excel worksheet with the chart visible on the
screen. Click the chart to select it, and from the Home tab choose Copy and
switch to PowerPoint. Add a new slide, right click in the placeholder on the
slide and choose Paste. This pastes the chart inside the placeholder as a linked
chart — note that it will alter if the data in the original workbook changes.
You can access the original data by clicking on the chart inside PowerPoint
to select it and from the Chart Tools > Design tab, select Edit Data.
When you do this, Excel opens with the worksheet in place on the screen. Change
the data and save the worksheet and the corresponding chart in your PowerPoint
presentation will change accordingly. If the data does not change, from inside
PowerPoint click the chart and choose Chart Tools > Design tab >
Refresh Data.
When you paste a copied chart, the
formatting of the chart will be determined by the theme and colors you have
configured in PowerPoint for your slide.
»
Create
Data in PowerPoint
Your other option for
placing a chart on a PowerPoint slide is to add the chart to the slide by
creating it from inside PowerPoint. To do this, add a new slide and choose a
layout that has place for a chart on it — Content with Caption is one of
these. Inside the content area is an Insert Chart button — click this to
insert a chart into the slide.
From the Insert Chart dialog, select the type of chart to add and click on a
chart type to use. When selecting a chart type, those on the left of the dialog
are the simplest styles and typically the easiest to understand. Avoid complex
charts like 100% stacked charts unless your audience is knowledgeable enough to
understand these. Click OK.
Microsoft Excel 2007 now opens with some sample data already in place in the
worksheet. Replace this data with the data that you want to plot in the chart.
Once you have entered your data, adjust the blue border to surround all the
data. Add more columns and rows if desired or remove columns and rows if you
have less data.
When you're done, click the
Close button to close the Excel window and return to PowerPoint. The Chart Tools
tab on the Ribbon includes Design, Layout, and Format tabs, which provide
formatting and other options for your chart.
On the Design tab is the Chart Styles Gallery from which you can select a
style for your chart. The options available and the overall look of the chart
will vary according to the Style you choose, the Theme you're using, and options
such as Effects you have applied.
If you go now and change the Theme or the Colors and then return to the
Chart Tools > Design tab you will notice that the styles will have
changed too. From the Chart Layouts dropdown list on the Design tab, you can
view different possible layouts for your chart — selecting Layout 5 for a column
chart, for example, adds a data table to the chart.
» Formatting
the Chart The
Chart Tools > Design tab also has an option
allowing you to change the type of chart you are using. On the
Chart Tools
> Layout tab are options for annotating a chart with shapes and a textbox
and adjusting elements such as the Chart Title, Axes, Gridlines, etc.
On the Chart Tools > Format tab are options for formatting chart
elements, including using WordArt styles to create a more interesting chart
title. To do this, click the chart title and then select a WordArt style to use
for the chart title. Here too, you can configure styles for the box which
surrounds the chart title, including creating a filled box by choosing a filled
border option.
»
Animating
a Chart
Charts in PowerPoint can be animated in various ways. For
example, click on the chart, choose the Animations tab and then select one of
the animation options such as By Series or By Category.
These options animate the chart so that it appears on the slide in pieces
rather than all at once. You can use the Custom Animation tools to adjust the
animation sequence and fine tune it.
»
Saving a
Chart
One of the features of PowerPoint that is not available in
the other applications in the Microsoft Office suite is the ability to save a
chart as a picture. To do this, right click the chart area and choose Save as
Picture and then choose a save format such as JPEG, PNG, TIFF or BMP.
When you save a chart as a picture you can use it as a static element later
on, for example, to illustrate a Word document containing your presentation
notes.
» Save a
Chart Template When you create and format
a chart inside PowerPoint you may want to save the format to use elsewhere in
the presentation. To do this, select the chart and choose the Save As Template
button on the
Chart Tools > Design tab. Type a name for the chart
template and click Save.
In future you can use this same template to format a different chart by
selecting the chart and choosing Chart Tools > Design tab, and from
the Change Chart Type dialog select the Templates option, select the saved
template, and click OK. The selected chart will readjust to match the look of
the template chart.
If the data does not appear in the chart, select the newly formatted chart
and choose Chart Tools > Design tab and click Refresh Data or choose
Edit Data, wait until Excel opens displaying the data and click to close Excel —
this will refresh the chart.
The new integration between PowerPoint 2007 and Excel 2007 allows you to
create attractive charts inside your PowerPoint slideshows. These charts have
all the design potential of charts that you create inside Excel so they look
good, they can be formatted using Themes, and they are a lot more sophisticated
than charts you could create in earlier versions of PowerPoint using the MS
Chart tool.
Adapted from winplanet.com.
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