creating two similar charts in one slide with one legend

[Maria]

How do I create two similar charts in one slide with only one legend? Say, I
need to make a chart for men and a similar one for women. But because each
one would necessarily have the same legend, I do not show the legend from
each chart but instead, create them manually using text box and shapes. But
sometimes I don't get the colors or patterns right. Is there a way to do this
automatically?

 

[Kathy Jacobs]

I cheat: I put the charts next to each other and set the legend to show of
one and not for the other. For the one that shows, I put the legend between
the two charts.

The other cheat I have done is to create the legend as normal, take a screen
shot of it (I use SnagIt), save the screen shot, turn off the legend, then
use Insert--> Picture -->From file to insert the saved graphic.

--
Kathryn Jacobs, Microsoft MVP PowerPoint and OneNote
Author of Kathy Jacobs on PowerPoint - Available now from Holy Macro! Books
Get PowerPoint answers at http://www.powerpointanswers.com

I believe life is meant to be lived. But:
if we live without making a difference, it makes no difference that we lived

 

[Maria]

Thanks for the tips, Kathy. I tried both of them but they did not work well
for me. First, I tried to take a shot of the screen and edited it (crude way,
not using SnagIt as I don't have it) but it did not look nice-- it's kinda
blurred. Second, while I prefer to have the legend at the bottom of the two
charts, I still tried to do your first suggestion but I also found it
difficult to come up with similar sized-charts. I could not resize the chart
with the legend to become comparable with the other one.

 

[Andy Pope]

Hi,

How about taking Kathy's 'cheat' just a little further.
Create 3 charts. The 2 main charts don't have a legend whilst the 3rd is
formatted and sized in such a way that only the legend is displayed. The
3rd chart only needs to hold enough dummy data to make the legend correct.

Cheers
Andy

 

[Kathy Jacobs]

Okay Andy - Now that is sneaky! It seems so obvious now that you have
suggested it, but I honestly never took the idea to this next step! Great
one!

--
Kathryn Jacobs, Microsoft MVP PowerPoint and OneNote
Author of Kathy Jacobs on PowerPoint - Available now from Holy Macro! Books
Get PowerPoint answers at http://www.powerpointanswers.com

I believe life is meant to be lived. But:
if we live without making a difference, it makes no difference that we lived

 

[Andy Pope]

That's because you a much more 'honorable' user of powerpoint than me

 

[Maria]

Thanks very much guys. I was able to do it. Andy's suggestion needed a little
more cheating but they worked ok.

 

[Kathy Jacobs]

Glad to hear it worked. If you get a chance, can you satisfy my curiosity
and tell me what additional cheating was needed to make Andy's idea work?

--
Kathryn Jacobs, Microsoft MVP PowerPoint and OneNote
Author of Kathy Jacobs on PowerPoint - Available now from Holy Macro! Books
Get PowerPoint answers at http://www.powerpointanswers.com

I believe life is meant to be lived. But:
if we live without making a difference, it makes no difference that we lived

 

[Maria]

Here's what I did:
1. create and format the first chart with no legend, then duplicate for the
second and edit data accordingly
2. create another duplicate, show legend, set all data values to zero and
basically delete all remnants of the chart itself. it will leave you one line
that you cannot delete and only the legend. because i do not want this extra
line to show, i resize the legend to approximate the line and move the legend
(or line) so that they overlap each other.

one must do this only when the chart was properly set-up already because any
edits in the chart (e.g. change color or pattern) will mean you have to do #2
all over again.