How to export a chart from Excel to PowerPoint?

Yesterday’s post triggered this question: how to export a chart from Excel to PowerPoint? The short answer: copy the data not the chart.



Standard Excel charts are ugly, they have the wrong formatting, they have the wrong colors, axis labels are…

How to pick the right data chart

PowerPoint offers a vaste number of options for designing a data chart. Which one should you choose? Here are some of the guidelines I use:

• A ranking by size: horizontal bar
• Development over time with a handful of data…

Non-wordy-self-explanatory slides

Everyone has bought into the idea that presentation slides full of text are poor communicators of ideas. The result is that many presentations are now so minimalist, that hardly anyone can understand them without verbal explanation. This creates a problem, as more and…

Column chart with totals

Here is a little trick to create automatic totals on top of column charts. This is an alternative to placing text labels manually, and especially useful when the data in the column charts is changing frequently.

Re-ordering objects

Despite my 10,000 hours of PowerPoint I never bothered to push the re-order objects button in the arrange menu (Mac). Hey, and out came a nice interface to make things to the front or to the back of the slide.

Slide make-over secrets

You do not have to pay a professional presentation designer to do basic chart make-overs. Here are the secrets:

• Take out ugly reflections, bevels, and huge shadows
• Center things properly
• Align and distribute…

Presenting a mobile demo

Passing a device with your demo app around the audience is not enough, even for a small group of people:

1. Screens are small and do not make a big impression
2. People do not know what to do in order to see the best of the app