How To Plot A Graph In Word

I have then much money in the bank I'm going to give away my number one reporting fourth dimension saving secret (HAHAHAHAH not at all! I'chiliad giving information technology abroad considering I honey you and I desire to make your life easier). This is how you lot link Excel to your other reporting software and so that your charts will automatically update when you add together new data to your spreadsheet. If this doesn't sound 100% thrilling to you, you oasis't stopped to consider how linking Excel to Word or PowerPoint will save yous a billion hours of your life (and impress your boss and get you lot a raise or at least an afternoon off).

This is going to exist technical. Nitty gritty. Precise.

Footstep 1: Make all of your graphs in Excel. Make them perfect. In the past I would get my graph most 75% done in Excel and and then end it off in my report only this won't work. Get the fonts exactly right. Make sure the size of the graph in Excel is the size you lot will want it to exist in the final document. This is a stride I had to redo several times. That'southward ok.

Step 2: Paste the graph into Word or PowerPoint using this very special paste method. Click on the graph in Excel and click Copy (Ctrl+C), then open up Give-and-take or PowerPoint and wait up in the card imprint for the Paste button. It will have a dropdown arrow, which you demand to click. Select Paste Special. In the Paste Special box, click the radio button next to Paste Link.

By default, the highlight will be on Microsoft Office Graphic Object. Don't change this. Your graph volition however paste in as an Excel graph, not a picture or anything similar that.

Pace iii: Close your Word or PowerPoint file. Open Excel to make any changes you demand to the graph. Close Excel. Open Discussion or PowerPoint once more. The pattern here is that you lot don't really take everything open up at once. Information technology's the easiest way to get things to update.

Step 4: When you open up Discussion or PowerPoint, you might see this carte pop up:

If you do not meet this menu, in Word but click in the graph that needs to be updated and get to this Refresh Data button in your menu bar:

If you don't see the menu in PowerPoint, right click on the graph and select Update Link:

Either fashion, your report plan is going to recall for a minute. Exist patient.

Step 5: Excel crashes. Yeah, at least on my computers while this thinking is happening I get these popup boxes that tell me Excel has crashed. I only click OK or whatever.

Step half-dozen: Despite the crash, the graphs automatically update.

Step 7: Dear god, effort to email this all to someone else. Information technology won't work straight abroad. This whole linking business concern is simply local to your automobile. The recipient will take to make it local to his or her machine besides. This is how to practise it.

Save both files onto the new local machine.

Open the report file (Give-and-take or Publisher).

Go to the File tab and wait in the lower right for this expanse chosen Edit Links to Files

Open up this up. The new menu volition await similar this:

It'south listing the file that holds every graph I paste-linked. See how the source files all first with C:\ ?? That's my own local car, people. So the recipient will have to change each one to the recipient'south machine. Just click Update Source and point the report file to the new location of the Excel file. And click the radio button by Automatic update.

It's going to be hard to tell which nautical chart belongs to which file. We don't have any handy notes in here that identify annihilation as "the dot plot on folio 4." The list is in the gild in which the graphs appear in the report but for these reasons it can be a lot easier to accept all the report graphs in the same Excel file.

It's going to take you a minute to go your report looking great. You'll fiddle with the chart sizes and take to paste and repaste your graphs until it'due south all prepare. But next twelvemonth? Yous JUST Have TO UPDATE THE TABLE. And then you take the remainder of the afternoon off and send me a quick tweet about how cracking that was. Smooches.