Welcome back to the Research Tidbits series!
Albert Einstein was quoted as saying that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. This quote brings a smile to my face as I am reminded of my occasional trials and tribulations with technology. I have a feeling I’m not alone, although perhaps ‘insanity’ is a bit strong characterization! In the interest of preserving my fellow evaluators’ sanity, I’d like to share a tip that I recently picked up about importing and exporting charts.
Recently, I was working on a PowerPoint presentation and needed to import some charts from an Excel spreadsheet. These were user-defined charts with our specific color scheme (For some tips on how to make these types of charts, click here.) I found that every time I imported the charts, the labels disappeared. I first tried to alter the chart size in Excel before I copied them over, but to no avail. Try as I might, I still had the same result. It struck me that perhaps others experienced this problem, too. I typed my problem into a quick web search and found out that this was indeed a problem with some user-defined charts. However, I learned that I could make a chart into a picture by clicking shift, accessing the edit menu and selecting “Copy Picture.” Voila! Problem solved.
My take-away messages from this experience are: 1) Yes, there IS an easier way to import Excel charts; and 2) if you’re having a problem with technology, chances are you are not alone. Type your problem into a web search and with luck, your problem will soon be solved.
Welcome back to the Research Tidbits series!
Albert Einstein was quoted as saying that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. This quote brings a smile to my face as I am reminded of my occasional trials and tribulations with technology. I have a feeling I’m not alone, although perhaps ‘insanity’ is a bit strong characterization! In the interest of preserving my fellow evaluators’ sanity, I’d like to share a tip that I recently picked up about importing and exporting charts.
Recently, I was working on a PowerPoint presentation and needed to import some charts from an Excel spreadsheet. These were user-defined charts with our specific color scheme (For some tips on how to make these types of charts, click here.) I found that every time I imported the charts, the labels disappeared. I first tried to alter the chart size in Excel before I copied them over, but to no avail. Try as I might, I still had the same result. It struck me that perhaps others experienced this problem, too. I typed my problem into a quick web search and found out that this was indeed a problem with some user-defined charts. However, I learned that I could make a chart into a picture by clicking shift, accessing the edit menu and selecting “Copy Picture.” Voila! Problem solved.
My take-away messages from this experience are: 1) Yes, there IS an easier way to import Excel charts; and 2) if you’re having a problem with technology, chances are you are not alone. Type your problem into a web search and with luck, your problem will soon be solved.