Joan said:
I am in the unfortunate position of job searching due to
my former company's decision to outsource to India.
One of the "tests" given by agencies include embedded MS
Graph in Powerpoint presentations. I have no trouble
with Excel but find that I have problems actually sizing
charts consistently with MS Graph
Any tips on where to find some info would be greatly
appreciated
I don't know that there's anything specifically about this documented
anywhere, Joan, but here are some tips.
1. When you set the font in the graph, deselect "autosize" on that
dialog box. That will keep your fonts at the point size you set them
instead of increasing them or decreasing them as you manipulate the
graph. That, of course, makes it easier for you to keep the graph text
consistent with the rest of the text on the slide.
2. Do your basic resizing with the "herringbone" edges around the graph
when it's activated. Drag by a corner to keep the overall Chart Area
proportionate. Drag the top or the size to resize vertically or
horizontally. If you do this by dragging the edges in PPT when the graph
isn't activated, you can cause some very odd distortion.
3. Keep the basic overall Chart Area size (see #2) "tight" to the size
of the graph itself. To make a graph itself larger, drag the edges of
the Plot Area as opposed to the Chart Area. You may need to increase the
Chart Area somewhat to allow for increasing the Plot Area, but that's
okay. Basically, the goal is to have your graph sized appropriately by
sizing the *graph itself,* not by just increasing the Chart Area so it
drags off the edge of the slide.
I see all kinds of oddball jumps and resizes when the Chart Area greatly
exceeds the width (or height) of a slide. As I partially described in
#2, this kind of thing is usually caused when people drag the edges or
corners of the chart selection area when in PPT itself, not when Graph
is activated. And this is just not terribly reliable, as far as I'm
concerned.
4. In PPT, you can always right-click the chart (this would be when the
Graph is not activated and you're on the PPT slide itself) and choose
Format Object/Size. This is a more reliable way to resize graphs than
the aforementioned dragging is. I still recommend using the technique in
#2 to get your proportions and basic sizing correct, then use the
right-click Format Object to tweak to specifications.
5. When you open a graph to activate Graph, try using a
right-click/Chart Object/Edit instead of a double-click. It's kinda
crazy, but I often find that things move around less if I open this way
than if I double-click. (I'm probably moving my mouse on the second part
of the double-click or something, but at least this right-click seems to
work better for me.)
Finally, if you don't already know this, to tell the difference between
Chart Area and Plot Area in an activated Graph, you can select various
parts of the chart and look on the toolbar for the "Chart Objects" box
-- it will change to show the names of the parts as you select them.
That will help you see the difference between a plot area and a chart
area (which can be hard to select or even determine on some chart types.
I find it difficult to select a pie chart plot area sometimes, for
instance. You can use this box on the toolbar to select things in the
chart as well.)
If you need to insure that your graphs are all the same size throughout
a presentation, you can use these techniques to create one, then just
copy that slide and change the data sheet as necessary. Using especially
#1 with the fonts and #5 with the opens will help maintain your sizes.
