Inserting and Updating an Excel Worksheet

The table capabilities of PowerPoint are perfectly adequate for the display of simple information that is unlikely to change during the useful life of the presentation. However, if your data involves calculations or is likely to require updating, you will probably want to maintain the information in an Excel worksheet. You can then embed the worksheet in a slide as an object, or you can link the slide to the worksheet so that you won't have to worry about keeping the data current in more than one place.

Embedded objects and linked objects differ in the following ways:

• An embedded object is an object that maintains a direct connection to its original program, known as the source program. After you insert an embedded object, you can easily edit it by double-clicking it, which opens the program in which it was originally created. Be aware that embedding an object in a presentation increases the presentation's file size, because PowerPoint has to store not only the data itself but also information about how to display the data.

• A linked object is a representation on a slide of information that is still stored in the original document, known as the source document. If you edit the source document in the source program after adding a linked object to a slide, PowerPoint updates the representation of the object. Because PowerPoint stores only the data needed to display the information, linking results in a smaller file size than embedding.

For example, suppose a sales manager stores past sales information and future sales projections in Excel worksheets. On one slide in a presentation, she might embed the past sales information, which won't change, as an object. On another slide, she might link the future sales projections, which she is still in the process of fine-tuning. Then as she updates the projections worksheet, the linked table in the PowerPoint presentation automatically updates as well.

In this exercise, you will insert an Excel worksheet and then format and update the content of the embedded object.

1.	Display Slide 6, and then on the Insert tab, in the Text group, click the Object button. The Insert Object dialog box opens. [View full size image]
2.	Select the Create from file option, and then click Browse. A Browse dialog box opens. (It is similar to the Open dialog box.)
3.	If the contents of the Documents folder are not displayed, click Documents in the Navigation Pane on the left side of the dialog box, and then navigate to the MSP\SBS_PowerPoint2007\Chapter05 folder.
4.	In the Chapter05 subfolder, click the 02_Costs workbook, and then click OK. The location of the workbook appears in the File box. [View full size image] Tip To link rather than embed the workbook, you select the Link check box in the Insert Object dialog box.
5.	In the Insert Object dialog box, click OK. PowerPoint embeds the data from the specified workbook in the slide. [View full size image]
6.	Drag the handle (the three dots) in the lower-right corner down and to the right to enlarge the object, and then point to its frame (not to a handle) and drag to align the object with the left end of the title.
7.	Double-click the worksheet object. Troubleshooting If you see a message saying that the chart must be converted to the 2007 Office system release format, click Edit Existing. The Excel workbook opens in PowerPoint with Sheet1 displayed. The Excel Ribbon replaces that of PowerPoint at the top of the window. [View full size image] The columns are labeled with letters (A, B, C, and so on), and the rows are labeled with numbers (1, 2, 3, and so on). You can reference each cell by its column letter followed by its row number (A1, A2, A3, and so on). You can reference a block of cells by the cell in its upper-left corner and the cell in its lower-right corner, separated by a colon (for example, A1:C3). See Also For more information about using Microsoft Office Excel 2007, see Microsoft Office Excel 2007 Step by Step (ISBN 0-7356-2304-X) by Curtis Frye (Microsoft Press, 2006).
8.	Click cell B3, type 80, click cell C3, type 60, and then press . Excel automatically formats the new cost of locating documents in cell C3 as currency.
9.	Click cell C7. The total cost in cell C7 is calculated by the formula shown in the formula bar below the Ribbon, so the new amount you entered in cell C3 changed the total from $400 to $380. This change affects only the object on the slide. The data in the Excel workbook does not change.
10.	Click a blank area of the slide. Excel closes, and the PowerPoint Ribbon reappears.
11.	Click a blank area again to deactivate the object. [View full size image] CLOSE the 02_Worksheets presentation without saving your changes