You need a chart in your PowerPoint presentation. The chart (or even just the data) already exists in an Excel file, so recreating it in PowerPoint seems like more work than you should need to do. It is. | • | The task: Get an Excel chart into your PowerPoint presentation with the least amount of work. | | • | The challenge: You want to be able to edit and format that chart to match other charts in your PowerPoint presentation. | | • | The solution: Import the Excel chart so that it becomes a PowerPoint chart. |
 Example of an a chart from Excel put into PowerPoint How to get it doneIf you would like to follow along and try this for yourself, download the sample Excel file available on the right side of this page. Important To import a complete chart and its data from Excel into PowerPoint, start with your chart on its own sheet in Excel, as it is in the sample file provided. To import a chart into PowerPoint: 1. | In PowerPoint, open the Slide Layout task pane to select your preferred layout. To do this, on the Format menu, click Slide Layout. Then, select your preferred layout for a new slide from those available under the heading Content layout, such as the Title and Content layout shown here: | 2. | Click the Insert Chart icon that appears on the slide, as shown here, to open a new PowerPoint chart that fits your slide. Note that when you use any Content layout other than Blank, the graphic you see here will be available directly on the slide. | 3. | With the PowerPoint chart open, on the Edit menu, click Import File, and then select the Excel file containing the chart you want to import. The Import Data Options dialog box will open, showing you the available sheets in your Excel file from which to import a chart or chart data. If you are using the sample data, the Import Data Options dialog box will look similar to this image: | 4. | Select the sheet containing the chart to import and click OK. If using the sample data, select Chart and click OK, as shown in the image above. Your chart and its data have now been imported to become a PowerPoint chart. Note that there are some complex Excel chart types and a few advanced Excel formatting options that are not available in PowerPoint charts. For example, the Excel chart in the sample data uses two rows for the x-axis labels (the date labels on the bottom of the sample chart), but PowerPoint charts only support a single row of x-axis labels. so, this axis looks a bit different when the chart is imported into PowerPoint, as shown here:  The X-axis in Excel from the sample chart in this article, and the same X-axis after importing the chart into PowerPoint |
Tip If you use default chart colors in Excel, you can easily update your imported chart to match the colors of your PowerPoint presentation. To do this, click anywhere on the slide outside of your newly imported chart. Then, double-click on the chart to open it. The colors will update automatically to match your PowerPoint presentation.
 | Stephanie Krieger
Stephanie Krieger is a Microsoft Office System MVP as well as author of the books Advanced Microsoft Office Documents 2007 Edition Inside Out (February 2007) and Microsoft Office Document Designer. As a professional document consultant, she has helped many global companies develop enterprise solutions for Microsoft Office and taught numerous professionals to build great documents by understanding how the Office programs “think.” Stephanie writes regularly for several Microsoft Web pages and frequently delivers Microsoft webcasts. Visit her blog, arouet.net, for Microsoft Office tips as well as information about new and upcoming publications and webcasts.
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