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Home | Products | PowerPoint | Books | Book Excerpts
Fixing PowerPoint Annoyances
by Echo Swinford
...continued from Page 1 Paste the Whole Workbook with the Chart
Font
Size Goes Wacky When I Resize
Create Separate
Chartsheets
Fonts on Chart Not Visible
Excel
Headers and Footers Don’t Transfer
Paste the Whole Workbook with the Chart
The Annoyance: I’ve copied Excel charts into PowerPoint
for years, but I just
realized that it pastes the entire workbook. Has PowerPoint always
behaved
this way?
The Fix: By default, when you
paste Excel
charts into PowerPoint, it embeds the
entire workbook. This can cause problems— large
file sizes, data being inadvertently
included in presentations, etc.
In PowerPoint 97 and 2000, if you do not
want the entire workbook included in your
presentation, you must select Edit | Paste
Special and choose an image type from the
list (see Figure 4-14). This pastes a simple
image of the Excel chart, which is no longer
connected to the data used to create it.
Figure 4-14. The Paste Special dialog box
lets you specify what format you want to
paste.
In PowerPoint 2002 and 2003, you can
select Edit | Paste Special to choose an
image, or you can simply click the Paste Options icon to paste
a picture
of the chart (see Figure 4-15). The Paste Options button appears
when
you paste an object onto a slide, and the available options depend
on what
type of object you’ve pasted. For example, pasting data cells
from an Excel
spreadsheet pastes a “PowerPoint-style table” by default.
The Paste Options
button lets you paste as an Excel Table (entire workbook), a Picture
of Table
(smaller file size), or Keep Text Only.
Figure 4-15. The Paste Options icon shows up immediately after
you paste something on a slide. The
options you see change with the type of object that you paste.
Back
Font Size Goes Wacky When I Resize
The Annoyance: When I try
to resize the data I pasted by dragging the edges
and corners on the slide, the font size goes crazy and gets distorted.
How
can I make this stop?
The Fix: Select Edit | Paste Special, choose
the “Paste
link” option,
and then
choose “Microsoft Office Excel Workbook Object” to
link to the spreadsheet
as opposed to embedding it in the slide. You can break the link
later
if necessary.
Back
Create Separate Chartsheets
The Annoyance: I have a bunch
of charts in a workbook, which I linked
to my presentation. When I update the links, the different
charts in the
PowerPoint file all change to the same chart, so it looks like
I just linked to
the same chart over and over. This is not good.
The Fix: Put the charts on separate chartsheets in Excel,
and then link them
to the PowerPoint slides. To change a graph from a chart object
to a separate
chartsheet, right-click the chart in Excel, choose Location,
and select “Place
chart as new sheet.” Then reinsert them into your presentation.
If the charts
continue to change when updating, save the separate chartsheets
as separate
Excel workbooks.
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OLE Linking Versus Embedding
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The main difference between OLE linking
and OLE embedding is where the data is actually stored.
If you copy a cell range in an Excel spreadsheet
and paste it onto a PowerPoint slide, you have created
an OLE embedded object. In this case, the entire
spreadsheet is embedded within the PowerPoint file.
OLE embedded objects increase your PowerPoint file
size because they include not only all the data from
the source file, but also the overhead that allows
you to open the source application and edit the file
from within PowerPoint. You can delete the Excel
file and it will not affect the data on your PowerPoint
slide.
If you copy the same cell range in Excel, select
Edit | Paste Special, and then choose Paste Link,
PowerPoint creates a shortcut to the Excel file.
Thus, when you update the data in Excel, it will
also update on your PowerPoint slide.
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This is known as OLE linking. The upside
is that the size of your PowerPoint file will be much
smaller than if you simply pasted the spreadsheet onto
your slide, creating an OLE embedded object. The downside
is that you must keep the Excel file readily available
for PowerPoint. You must also make any changes to the
data in the actual Excel file.
To get the best of both worlds, create OLE linked
objects using Edit | Paste Special | Paste Link
while you’re working on the file, and then
ungroup the object before finalizing the presentation
and/or sending it to others. (Of course, do this
on a copy of your presentation if you’re sending
for review before the file is finalized.) This will
break the “shortcut” OLE link to the
object, leaving you with an image that’s easily
displayed in your PowerPoint file and that doesn’t
cause a huge file size hit.
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Back
Fonts on Chart Not Visible
The Annoyance: My Excel chart uses
black fonts, which makes it impossible
to read when I paste it onto my slide with a black background.
Do I have to reformat this stupid chart just so I can see what
it says?
The Fix: Relax, you don’t have to reformat your
chart. Instead, recolor the
chart to make it more readable.
Choose View-Toolbars-Picture to display the Picture toolbar.
Select the
chart and click the Recolor Excel Chart button (see the left
side of Figure
4-16). Specify whether to recolor the entire chart, recolor only
the text
and background colors of the chart, or do nothing (see the right
side of
Figure 4-16).
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| Figure 4-16. The Recolor option on the Picture
toolbar (left) lets you recolor portions of your Excel chart
or the entire thing (right). |
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Note - The Recolor tool
on the Picture toolbar is also great for working
with clip art. It lets you recolor clips without
having to deconstruct them by ungrouping a million
times, selecting individual pieces and changing the
colors, and then regrouping.
PowerPoint also has a hidden
feature that lets you recolor slide background
images (see www.indezine.com/products/
powerpoint/cool/recolorimages.html for specifics).
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Back
Excel Headers and Footers Don’t Transfer
The Annoyance: How do I import headers and
footers from an Excel workbook
onto a slide? I can get the Excel workbook onto the PowerPoint
slide without
any trouble.
The Fix: Headers and footers don’t
actually show up in Excel until you print
the file. If you must transfer your headers and footers to the
PowerPoint
slide, add text boxes to the Excel worksheet, enter the appropriate
header
and footer text, and take a screenshot. You can hit the Print Screen
button
on your keyboard and Ctrl+V to paste the image onto the slide.
Crop
as desired using the Crop tool on the Picture toolbar in PowerPoint.
Alternatively, you can add the headers and footers by adding text
boxes to
the PowerPoint slide itself.
| Note - Print Screen will
capture your entire monitor display. Holding the
Alt key while you hit Print Screen will limit the
capture to the active window. |
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Copyright © 2006 O'Reilly Media, Inc. All Rights
Reserved.
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