PowerPoint is always used to prepare a presentation or thesis for school or university, one of the best programs included in the Microsoft Office suite. However, if we are a beginner with this powerful program, we may find it difficult to add graphic elements capable of giving an extra boost to the slides, as in the case of graphics (widely used in office reports or theses). To meet the needs of those who take their first steps with the productivity tools offered by computers, in this guide we will show you how to add charts on PowerPoint. For the guide we will use the latest version of Office available, but the steps described can also be applied to the old versions of the suite (at least those that have the Ribbon Bar at the top).
We don't have Office or we don't want to pay the user license "> Excel tricks to become experts in calculations and data presentation .
1) How to add charts on PowerPoint
To add pie charts, bar graphs or any other type on our slides we open the PowerPoint program on the PC, add some of the text or open ready-made slides and create a new empty slide by clicking on the New slide button, present in high on the Home bar.
We immediately delete the two text fields on the slide by clicking on the edges of the two fields (they are dashed and clearly identifiable) and using the DELETE key or the BACKSPACE key on the keyboard.
Having prepared the empty slide, we click on the Insert menu, then we click on the small Graph button , present at the top of the bar.
A window will open in which we will be able to choose the style we want to adopt for the graphic inside the slide.
We choose among the classic ones such as columns, bars, lines or pie charts for professional use and to give a nice look to the slide; if instead we are looking for something more innovative we can also choose tree charts, radar-shaped, 3D chart, stock chart, a scatter chart or a histogram chart. If we are not convinced by the templates offered within PowerPoint, we can click on the Templates icon -> Manage Templates and upload those downloaded from the Internet.
In this regard, we invite you to read our guide -> Templates and Templates Office to download for Word, Excel and Powerpoint .
Once we have chosen the right chart template, we click OK ; it will immediately be added to the slide along with a small box with Excel-style cells.
Within the small spreadsheet we can modify the various data that make up the graph, adding our numeric values, our captions and also the arrangement of the various bars or lines. To make further changes, we right-click inside the graph to be able to open the context menu with all the main modification items.
If necessary we change the colors, the type of graph, the format, the title of the graph and, if necessary, we also add a comment to it (very useful in the presentation phase).
When we are ready, just close the small Excel window and click on an empty spot on the slide to see the final effect of the graph; to try it in full screen (as if we were playing a real slide) just click on the Start icon from the top left.
How to add a chart with LibreOffice Impress
Microsoft Office is very expensive and may not be within everyone's reach, especially for those who want to use it at home without business purposes.
Instead of relying on piracy (always risky since viruses are caught), we can add graphics to our slides and presentations using the free LibreOffice office suite. After downloading the installer to your computer (it is compatible with Windows, Mac and Linux), start the Impress application, i.e. the free PowerPoint fee in this suite.
Inside the program an empty slide will appear with two text fields, which we can remove as already seen on PowerPoint (click on the edges of the two fields, then Del or Backspace key to remove them).
Once the empty slide is obtained, we click on the Insert chart button at the top.
After a few seconds we will see a predefined chart template appear in the center of the slide; the upper bar of the program will change and a side window will also open.
To modify the data we can use the keys and buttons available at the top, which will "unlock" the various editable items in the right part of the program. The most important changes can also be made by right-clicking inside the graph and using one of the functions available in the contextual menu.
From here, for example, we can change the type of chart, format a series of data, change the data table used as a reference and insert the various labels and names to the bars and lines inside the chart. At the end of the modifications we click in an empty point of the slide to admire the final result; to start a real presentation just click on the menu Presentation -> Start from the first slide or Start from the current slide .
READ ALSO -> How to create graphics on Word
