9.3 Charts and data on slides

What you'll be able to do

Put a number in front of a room so that it lands. Choose the right way to bring a chart over from Excel, and strip it so it reads from a distance. Know when the honest slide is one enormous number.

Before you start

Have the fix-this-deck practice file open, and an Excel chart of your own. The pivot sales workbook from the Excel module works well.

The work

1. Same either way: copy a chart in Excel with Ctrl+C. In PowerPoint, make the paste a decision rather than a reflex: open Paste Special with Ctrl+Alt+V and choose. The three results differ in ways that matter. Linked means the slide reads the workbook, updates when it changes, and breaks if the file moves or travels without the deck. Embedded means a copy of the workbook rides inside the deck: editable, heavy, and it quietly carries whatever else that workbook holds. Picture means pixels: light, unbreakable and final.
2. Same either way: choose by asking one question. Will this number change before the talk? Monthly numbers still moving should be linked, with the deck and the workbook kept together. A finished one-off should be a picture. Embedding is the rare middle case, and never for a workbook holding anything the room should not see.
3. Same either way: a chart made for a desk fails in a room. Strip it for distance. Delete the gridlines, the legend when one set of numbers makes it pointless, the decimal places and the axis clutter. Select each element and press Delete. Two things must survive: the shape of the data, and the one label that names it.
4. Same either way: say the point in the title. "Sales, 2024-25" describes the axes. "Sales doubled after March" is why the slide exists. Retitle every chart with its finding. The room may forget the bars, and it keeps the sentence.
5. Same either way: sometimes the finding is one number: 40% growth, three times faster, ₹2 lakh saved. Then the honest slide is that number, huge, with one line of context. No chart pretending there was an analysis. Insert a text box with Alt+N, X and make the number the size of the slide. It is the most remembered kind of slide there is.
6. Same either way: a table on a slide is for looking at, not for reading. About four rows and three columns is the limit before a room stops trying. Make the one cell that matters bold. Anything bigger belongs in the handout, so say so on the slide and move on.

Try it

Bring your Excel chart onto a practice-deck slide twice, once linked and once as a picture, and note the difference when the workbook changes. Then strip the deck's cluttered chart to the shape and one label. Retitle it with its finding, and build one big-number slide from the same data.

Check yourself