From the course: PowerPoint Essential Training (Microsoft 365)

Create and format charts - PowerPoint Tutorial

From the course: PowerPoint Essential Training (Microsoft 365)

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Create and format charts

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- [Instructor] If you're doing a business presentation, it's hard to get away without doing any charts, but you can create those right in PowerPoint. You could also import one that you already have from Excel. Let's do both so that you can see how they work. I have a blank slide. To get started, I'll change to the Insert ribbon tab and click Chart. I have a long list of charts I can choose from, such as Column, Line, Pie, even Map charts. I'm going to choose a pie chart. Once I choose a chart type, each one of them has different subtypes that you can choose. I'll select a 3-D Pie chart, click OK. And it's going to bring up a little mini Excel window. I can click with my mouse to start typing and populate my own data. While I'm typing, the chart will update on the fly with my new data. When I'm all done, I can click the X on the top right-hand side of the Excel window to get back to my chart. From here, I have some chart options. I have a new tab called Chart Design. From here, I can choose a quick layout to get the chart formatted any way that I want. I can hover my mouse over it and choose a style that works for me. All the way to the right, I can click Edit Data and choose that if I need to update my chart to some new figures. If I don't like this chart type, I can click Change Chart Type and update it to a completely different type. I can also click Quick Layout on the left-hand side and change the way that the data is arranged in the chart itself. I'm not changing any of the data, just the way it looks. And finally, I can click add Chart Element and add things like titles, labels. I can even add or remove a chart legend. Because this chart is just a regular text box on the slide, I can click once to select it, change to the Home ribbon tab, and change the font properties. For example, I can make it larger so it's easier to read, and I can change the font color also. So that's how you can create a chart right here in PowerPoint. But let's move to this blank slide and paste one in from Excel. I'll open up my Assets folder, and I have an Excel file right here ready to go. Here's some data and a chart that I've already made. I'll select the chart, hit Command + C to copy it, go back to my presentation, right click, and I have some paste options. I can choose to use the Destination Theme and embed the workbook. This means that it's going to use all of the colors and fonts that it's using in the current PowerPoint theme. Embedding the workbook means that it's going to embed the Excel file right in my PowerPoint presentation. Depending on the size of the Excel file, it could vastly inflate the size of my PowerPoint. It could also impose a security risk if there's confidential data in that Excel file. If I'm sharing this presentation out with other people or collaborating on it, they'll also have the contents of that Excel file. So that's something important to keep in mind. I can also choose to keep the source formatting and embed the workbook. This gives me the same embedding risks, but keeping the source formatting will keep it the way it looks such as the colors and fonts, just as it did in Excel. I can choose to use the Destination Theme and link the data. This means it's going to keep PowerPoints' color scheme. However, if the contents of that Excel file are ever changed, this chart will also be changed and updated accordingly. I have the exact same option here, except to keep the source formatting. And finally, I can choose to insert it as a picture. This poses the least security risk. It will also keep the file size just a bit smaller. However, I won't ever be able to edit any of the data because it's going to be a picture. I'm going to choose to use the Destination Theme and embed the workbook. It's going to dump it in the slides and treat it just like you could any other object. For example, Designer gets invoked, and I can choose any of these choices. I'll close out of it. But I could also hold the Shift key down and resize it and make it larger or smaller, change any font properties and move it around on the slide. In fact, there's even a Format tab where I can use any of the effects, word styles and font properties like I could with any other shape or text box. So those are two very different ways to embed charts in PowerPoint. One is right from Excel, and the other one is creating it right in PowerPoint.

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