Meaningful facts and data are the basis of any successful presentation. It can, however, easily occur that old figures have snuck into your presentation. Learn how to always keep your charts up to date while simultaneously saving time!
However, when working with the standard PowerPoint feature, you often find limited possibilities. If you insert your data from a website into your Excel chart, you can update your data in Excel with only a few clicks. In PowerPoint, however, it is not that easy. Charts are not automatically refreshed when the presentation is opened, and unfortunately, the automatic update is not 100% reliable, so it quickly happens that changes to the Excel file are missed. The result is that your presentation is no longer up-to-date and in the worst case the wrong data is presented! In addition, one can easily lose track of several diagrams in a presentation. So it is e.g. When renaming or moving the Excel file(s) it is necessary to repair each link individually.
In our article "Automatically update PowerPoint Excel links" we will show you how to avoid this problem.
For more tips and tricks for your work with Excel and other Microsoft applications, check out our Microsoft 365 guide.
Yes, there are special add-ins for charts that simplify the creation and management of Excel links in PowerPoint. One example is empower® Chart Creation.
The integrated Excel Link Manager in empower® provides a clear overview of all linked charts and data sources. It shows which Excel files are connected to which elements on each slide, when they were last updated, and whether the links are working properly. Any changes in the Excel files are reliably reflected in your reports. No manual updates required.