UIS Tip of the Week: How to Copy an Excel Chart Into a PowerPoint Presentation to Protect Your Data

If you copy Excel charts into PowerPoint slides and then distribute the slide presentation to others, you may want to consider how you copy that chart into your presentation.

If you copy the chart as a chart, not only will the chart be copied into your presentation, but the entire Excel workbook will be copied into PowerPoint as well. If you then share that presentation with others, and if someone double-clicks on the chart in the slide, then PowerPoint will open the entire Excel workbook.

With the entire Excel workbook copied into PowerPoint, anyone who can access your presentation can also adjust the data and compromise its accuracy.

You can prevent this from happening by changing how you copy the Excel chart into PowerPoint.

1. Copy the Excel chart by selecting the chart and then pressing Ctrl+C.
2. Open your PointPoint presentation and go to the slide where you want the chart to appear.
3. Choose Paste Special from the Edit menu in PowerPoint.
4. In the Paste Special dialog box, select Picture (Windows Metafile), and then click OK.

   

Now only an image of the chart is pasted into the slide. Doing this maintains the security and accuracy of your data and helps reduce the size of your PowerPoint presentation.