Charts, tables & diagrams

Switch rows and columns in a chart

June 12, 2015 by Ellen Finkelstein 9 Comments

Have you ever created a chart in PowerPoint from data in Excel and discovered that it was configured all wrong? For example, here’s some data in Excel and you want to highlight the change of each income stream from year to year.

If you just select and copy that data, start a chart in PowerPoint, choose the default column chart (perhaps not the best idea–I’ll explain in a minute), and paste, you get the following chart.

That is SO wrong. PowerPoint has chosen to group the data by category instead of by year. The way to fix this is to switch the rows and the columns. The problem is that the Switch Row/Column button on the Chart Tools Design tab is grayed out.

Apparently, you have to edit and select the data to switch the rows and columns. So here’s what you need to do:

Click the Edit Data button.
Click the Select Data button.
Now, you can click the Switch Row/Column button.

When you do that, here’s what the chart looks like.

It makes more sense, right?

But it’s still difficult to see the trend over time for each type of income stream. When you want to show change over time, a line chart often makes more sense.

After changing the chart to a line chart and increasing the font size, here’s what it looks like.

Now you can see clearly how the various income streams have changed.

Please share this information with your friends and colleagues who might need help formatting their charts. Use the sharing buttons below.

Use PowerPoint like a flip chart–draw as you speak

April 11, 2015 by Ellen Finkelstein 3 Comments

A flip chart can be a great way to present. You write or draw as you talk. Yes, people have to wait until you finish writing or drawing, but the process is very engaging to the audience. If you’re old enough, you may remember teachers writing on the blackboard as they taught. It was a slower time!

But as you write or draw, your audience has time to think about what you’re saying.

This technique is especially helpful when you draw. For example, you might show a process or a configuration. Your picture helps people understand what you’re saying and they get the point with you as your drawing unfolds.

You can use PowerPoint in the same way, in Normal view. You might want to reduce or eliminate the side and bottom panes, but you don’t have to. Then just use PowerPoint’s drawing tools to create a diagram. You draw as you speak.

You don’t have to get it perfect. Just like a flip chart diagram can be a little messy, so can your slide. If you want to use it again, you can fix it up later. The point is just to bring your audience with you on your story, as you explain it. Don’t distract them by making lots of unnecessary adjustments. But you might want to practice first! Unless of course, you decide spontaneously to draw — then just let it happen!

You can do this live or on a webinar — it doesn’t matter.

Here’s a 1-minute video that shows me creating the diagram above.

Create a table from Excel data in PowerPoint

February 15, 2015 by Ellen Finkelstein 4 Comments

Recently, a subscriber asked me about how to put a table of data from Excel on a slide. You can do this in a couple of ways.

First, think about whether the data will be readable if it will be projected on a screen. Also consider whether the data lends itself to a graph, because graphs can be easier to understand. If you have too much data to fit on a slide, here are 2 options:

Divide it up onto multiple slides
Provide it as a handout, either printed or electronic

Copy into a PowerPoint table

PowerPoint’s tables offer you lots of options for design and layout. If you want the table to look polished, use this option. An easy way to start is with the Title & Content layout. Then click the Insert Table icon in the middle of the slide. You’ll see the small Insert Table dialog box.

PowerPoint's tables offer you lots of options for design and layout. If you want the table to look polished, use this option. #powerpoint #excelspreadsheet Share on X

Go back to your Excel data and count the number of columns and rows you need, including the row and/or column headers. This is also the time to select the table and copy it to the Clipboard. Then return to PowerPoint and complete the dialog box. Click OK to insert the table.

You now see a default table on the slide and the Table Tools Design and Layout tabs appear, as you see here. [Read more…]

Customize the colors in your slide master

December 1, 2014 by Ellen Finkelstein 1 Comment

I see lots of messy presentations when I work with my clients. (That’s why they come to me for help.) One of the areas that is often a disaster is the slide master. Some of the things I see are:

Multiple slide masters caused by copying and pasting slides from other presentations and choosing the Keep Source Formatting option
Objects put on the slide master so that they appear on slides that shouldn’t have them, which are then covered up on the slide
The opposite–objects that should be put on the slide master put on every individual slide — or many of them — making the file huge
Lack of the needed custom layouts in the slide master, requiring manual adjustments on many slides

Colors are an easy fix and will save you time

But one problem that I almost always see is that the slide masters use the default colors — colors that are not used in the presentation — and this means that the colors of objects need to be manually changed on each slide. These objects include shapes, charts, SmartArt diagrams, and more.

Once you have the colors you need, creating slides will be much quicker and they’ll look better, too.

Here’s the procedure for customizing colors in PowerPoint by setting your theme’s color to the colors you actually want to use.

Decide on your colors. If you don’t have colors from other materials, such as your website, read “Find colors for your PowerPoint theme colors.” Also see “Copying colors from a website.”

In PowerPoint 2007 and 2010, click the Design tab and choose Colors. In PowerPoint 2013, click the View tab, then click Slide Master and then choose Colors.

At the bottom of the list, choose Customize Colors. If you aren’t particular about your colors — you don’t have exact specifications, you can choose one of the options on the list that is similar to what you want and then choose Customize Colors.

In the Create New Theme Colors dialog box, type a name for your theme colors at the bottom. The first 4 colors are dark and light options for text and background. Often, you can leave these as is — PowerPoint uses them to make sure that your text is always a good contrast against your slide background.

The last 2 items are for hyperlinks and followed hyperlinks. PowerPoint uses them when you add a hyperlink to text. I rarely hyperlink text — I prefer to hyperlink shapes and put the text on the shapes because I don’t like the look of the underlined text. So I usually just change Accents 1 through 6. These are your main colors for shapes, charts, etc.

Click each of the accent colors in turn and choose More Colors. In the Colors dialog box, click the Custom tab if it isn’t displayed. The custom tab is where you can specify Red-Green-Blue (RGB) color specifications.

Type the Red, Green and Blue numbers (they can be from 0 to 255) in the appropriate text boxes. You’ll see the resulting color under the New label. Click OK.

Back in the Create New Theme Colors dialog box, click Save. (To edit existing theme colors, right-click the set from the Colors drop-down list on the ribbon and choose Edit. This opens the Edit Theme Colors dialog box, which is the same as the Create New Theme Colors dialog box.)

In PowerPoint 2013, on the Slide Master tab, click the Close Master View button.

You’ll probably want to save the result as a theme, especially if you’ve made other changes to the slide master. On the Design tab, click the More button at the right side of the Themes gallery and choose Save Current Theme. In the dialog box, type a name and click Save. Your new theme will now be available on the Design tab in the Custom section.

How do you make sure that you easily have the colors you need? Leave a comment!

Moving the axis labels when a PowerPoint chart/graph has both positive and negative values

July 14, 2014 by Ellen Finkelstein 4 Comments

For her PhD dissertation, my friend, Leslee Goldstein, did research teaching the Transcendental Meditation technique to Ugandan women who were part of an NGO (non-governmental organization) program that taught them skills to help them support themselves, such as sewing. These women had been subjected to a huge amount of stress in their lives and this stress made progress difficult.

She did 3 pre- and post-tests that are commonly used in this situation and got great results. But when she created the chart in PowerPoint, she had a problem.

As you can see, by default PowerPoint puts the horizontal axis labels near the axis. Usually, this works, but when you have a combination of positive and negative numbers, the bars interfere with the labels. While the results for the Self-Efficacy Scale and Medical Outcomes Survey increased, the Perceived Stress Scale numbers decreased.

Here’s how to fix this problem:

Select the chart.
Right-click the horizontal axis text and choose Format Axis.
In PowerPoint 2013: In the taskpane on the right, click the arrow next to Labels to expand that section.
In PowerPoint 2007, 2010 and 2013: Click the Label Position or Axis Labels drop-down list and choose High. (Another option that works in some situations is Low.)

Here’s the result.

Much better, right?

Do you have frustrations getting charts to look right in PowerPoint? Leave a comment!

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