Paste Linking a Chart into PowerPoint

Paste Linking a Chart into PowerPoint
Everyone wants and needs up-to the date information. So what do you do if you are putting together a PowerPoint presentation and all the numbers aren’t quite ready? In fact, they won’t be ready until the morning of the presentation? Well, you could start practicing some jokes to tell as a delay tactic but that’s probably not your greatest career move. Instead, grab a cup of coffee and read on.

With Microsoft Office, you can set up your PowerPoint presentation so that last minute sales numbers and the Excel chart showing financial sales projections can be included at the very last minute without a lot of stress. The key to up-to-the minute accurate information is linking. And the best part is that linking is extremely easy to do.

Paste Link
Paste Linking provides you with the ability to have your files linked and ensure that the most up to date information is shown as opposed to Paste which just copies a static image.
If you want to paste-link an Excel chart into PowerPoint, you simply

• Click on the Excel chart and select Copy.
• Move to PowerPoint slide you want to display the information
• Click Paste>Paste Special.
• Select Paste Link and then select Chart Object in the dialog box
• Click OK

In Excel 2007, you can shortcut this and just select Paste Special on the Paste choices.

So, what does this do for you? Try it and see..............

• Save and then Close the PowerPoint presentation
• Update the Excel chart you just linked
• Save and then close the Excel file.
• Open the PowerPoint presentation
• A dialog box will appear asking if you want to see the presentation as it looked when you last saved it or if you want PowerPoint to go and retrieve the latest information from the source file which, in this case, is the Excel chart.
• Click Yes to update

Look at your chart in the PowerPoint presentation and you should see it is up-to-date and reflects the changes that you had made in Excel.

You can Paste link Excel charts into Word as well. You can also paste link Excel cells as well as charts.
Hyperlinking is another method that I like to use and I will talk about that tomorrow.