Pasting charts from Excel to PowerPoint is one of the classic nightmares of an analyst.
First, you build some charts in Excel that are likely to be updated later. Then you paste these charts into a PowerPoint document. But every time you do that, you need to resize the charts so they go exactly where you want on your slides. And every time you need to make the slightest change, your have to start it all over again and waste a lot of time on resizing the charts. Enough! Don't waste time like this anymore.
To avoid this issue, there is a simple technique you can use:
1) Size and position your charts as you want in PowerPoint
2) Create a red rectangle frame in PowerPoint to delimit the charts position
Look at the red frame in the screenshot below. It delimits the position of charts on the slide. This delimitation will be used to pre-align charts in Excel, so that the position of charts is kept when we paste them from Excel to PowerPoint.
3) Look at the size of your charts in PowerPoint
Check the size of a chart. If you are using the Power-user add-in, you will find this at the right of the Power-user tab. Otherwise you will find the information in the Format tab.
These dimensions are identical for PowerPoint and Excel. So we will now use this to prepare the charts in Excel.
4) Copy the red frame and paste it to Excel
Since the dimensions are identical in PowerPoint and Excel, you can use this frame as a preview of where your charts will be in your slide and what size they will have.
5) Resize and position your charts in the red frame, then group them
Just format and position your charts in the frame just like in PowerPoint. In this example, we have changed the size of each chart to 6cm height and 9cm width (their size in PowerPoint), and we have used the frame to position them exactly like they were in PowerPoint.
6) Now next time you need to update your charts in PowerPoint for any reason, just paste the grouped charts from Excel
This will save you the effort of resizing and re-positioning each chart individually
7) Bonus: don't paste charts when you have new data, just update them!
If your charts or tables may need to be updated with new data in the future, you can save a lot of time linking them. Want to learn more? See How to create links between Excel and PowerPoint (or Word) for your charts and tables