This is a guest post by Drew Kesler.
You’ve been there before. It’s almost 5:00, and you are going crazy trying to finish the presentation due for a monthly performance meeting the next morning. The model is refreshed, and now it just takes a LOT of copying, pasting, and positioning to get the PowerPoint ready. Finally, the slides are finished…, until you read a new message from your boss requesting a minor change. But of course her change means you have to start all over with the copy and pastes…
There is always a better way! In the Oil and Gas industry, I constantly have monthly reports to assess the performance of our operating assets. Excel VBA makes it a cinch to automate the entire process. So when a simple change is requested, the presentation is automatically generated with the click of a button. No more wasting time!
So, here it is – How to Save TONS of Time by Using an Excel VBA Macro to Build Your Presentation:
1. Build your charts in Excel
2. Create a new worksheet and paste in all the charts you need for the presentation.
3. Open VBA. To do this, you can either press ALT + F11, or you can take the following steps:
a. To show the developer tab, click on the Microsoft Office Button and click Excel Options.
b. Click Popular and then select the Show Developer tab in the Ribbon.
c. Click on the Developer tab in the ribbon and click Visual Basic.
4. In your VBA Editor window, click File => Insert => Module.
5. Paste the following code into the module (I included comments so you can customize it to your liking).
6. Click Tools => References.
Add the Microsoft PowerPoint Library.
7. Now all you need to do is go to Excel and run the CreatePowerPoint macro! To make this easy, draw a rectangle shape in your Excel worksheet which contains all the charts you want to export to PowerPoint.
8. Right click the rectangle and click Assign Macro.
9. Click on the CreatePowerPoint macro and press Okay.
10. That’s it! Just click your rectangle button then sit back and watch it run! You’ll have your presentation in no time!
Download the Example Workbook & Play with this Macro
Click here to download the example workbook and play with the macro.
Note: If you have an error with Power Point application activation, use this code instead.
AppActivate ("Microsoft PowerPoint") <-- if this doesn't work
AppActivate "PowerPoint" <-- use this
Thanks Drew
Thank you so much Drew for writing this insightful article and showing us how to automate PPT Creation thru Excel VBA. I have really enjoyed playing this idea. And I am sure our readers will also like it.
If you like this technique, say thanks to Drew.
How do you Automate PPT Creation?
During my day job, I used to make a lot of presentations. But each one was different. So I used to spend hours crafting them.
And nowadays, I hardly make a presentation. But I know many of you make PPTs day in day out. And this technique presented by Drew is a very powerful way to save time.
Do you use macros to automate creation of presentations? What are your favorite tricks & ideas? Please share using comments.
Learn More VBA – Sign-up for our VBA Class Waiting List
Chandoo.org runs a VBA Class that teaches you from scratch, how to build macros to save time & automate your work. We opened our first batch in May this year and had an excellent response. More than 650 students signed up and are now learning VBA each day.
If you want to learn VBA & advanced Excel, this is a very good class to join.
Click here for full information on VBA classes.
About the Author:
Drew Kesler specializes in process automation and data visualization. He currently performs analytics and modeling for the Oil and Gas industry. His most recent projects include using GIS mapping technology to visualize data and enhance interaction across organizations.
14 Responses to “Group Smaller Slices in Pie Charts to Improve Readability”
I think the virtue of pie charts is precisely that they are difficult to decode. In many contexts, you have to release information but you don't want the relationship between values to jump at your reader. That's when pie charts are most useful.
[...] link Leave a Reply [...]
Chandoo,
millions of ants cannot be mistaken.....There should be a reason why everybody continues using Pie charts, despite what gurus like you or Jon and others say.
one reason could be because we are just used to, so that's what we need to change, the "comfort zone"...
i absolutely agree, since I've been "converted", I just find out that bar charts are clearer, and nicer to the view...
Regards,
Martin
[...] says we can Group Smaller Slices in Pie Charts to Improve Readability. Such a pie has too many labels to fit into a tight space, so you need ro move the labels around [...]
Chandoo -
You ask "Can I use an alternative to pie chart?"
I answer in You Say “Pie”, I Say “Bar”.
This visualization was created because it was easy to print before computers. In this day and age, it should not exist.
I think the 100% Bar Chart is just as useless/unreadable as Pies - we should rename them something like Mama's Strudel Charts - how big a slice would you like, Dear?
My money's with Jon on this topic.
The primary function of any pie chart with more than 2 or 3 data points is to obfuscate. But maybe that is the main purpose, as @Jerome suggests...
@Jerome.. Good point. Also sometimes, there is just no relationship at all.
@Martin... Organized religion is finding it tough to get converts even after 2000+ years of struggle. Jon, Stephen, countless others (and me) are a small army, it would take atleast 5000 more years before pie charts vanish... patience and good to have you here 🙂
@Jon .. very well done sir, very well done.
good points every one...
I've got to throw my vote into Jon's camp (which is also Stephen Few's camp) -- bars just tend to work better. One observation about when we say "what people are used to." There are two distinct groups here (depending on the situation, a person can fall in either one): the person who *creates* the chart and the person who *consumes* the chart. Granted, the consumers are "used to" pie charts. But, it's not like a bar chart is something they would struggle to understand or that would require explanation (like sparklines and bullet graphs). Chart consumers are "used to" consuming whatever is put in front of them. Chart creators, on the other hand, may be "used to" creating pie charts, but that isn't an excuse for them to continue to do so -- many people are used to driving without a seatbelt, leaving lights on in their house needlessly, and forwarding not-all-that-funny anecdotes via email. That doesn't mean the practice shouldn't be discouraged!
[...] example that Chandoo used recently is counting uses of words. Clearly, there are other meanings of “bar” (take bar mitzvah or bar none, for [...]
[…] Grouping smaller slices in pie chart […]
Good article. Is it possible to do that with line charts?
Hi,
Is this available in excel 2013?