Sharing Graphs between Excel and Word

[Lee]

We are searching for an easy way to insert Excel graphs
into Word and then placing the Word file into Adobe
InDesign. (InDesign is used for our large public
documents that need to be printed by a commercial printing
company as Word is very limited for design).
We can cope and paste the graph from Excel to Word and
link it so that when you change the Excel graph, it
automatically changes in Word but if you resize the graph
in Word, the text becomes distorted and is hard to read.
Does anyone know of any easy way to share the graphs
between Excel, Word and InDesign so that we do not have to
redraw these graphs and so that we do not have to change
the graphs in all three programs.

 

[Jon Peltier]

Lee -

Format your charts in Excel not for best appearance in Excel, but for
best appearance in Word, with as little adjustment as possible in Word
(even resizing causes this distortion, as you've found). You must have
a few basic chart formats that you use repeatedly. Spend a little time
making them wrong in Excel so they're right in Word, then don't ever
change them. I can't help with InDesign, but I assume the same design
philosophy applies: Make it in Excel, so the chart in Word looks good in
InDesign.

Also, you may want to automate your chart importing, which I describe here:
http://www.geocities.com/jonpeltier/Excel/XL_PPT.html
The page is geared more towards PowerPoint, which I use more, but the
techniques are applicable to Word as well.

- Jon

 

[George K]

Hi,

I am interested in copying-pasting charts from excel to word as well. I
don't use/need InDesign. I'm just writing a thesis and i'd like to eliminate
any distortion in lines, etc... What usually happens when i copy a chart
from excel to word (by single clicking the chart in excel, Ctrl-C, go to
word, Ctrl-V) is that the chart has not been transfered perfectly. eg. if
it's a 3d pie, the colour filling is as it appears in excel but the
surrounding line (the border of each piece of the pie) is like it's been
drawn by hand while in a moving car! What i need is charts placed in my word
document along with the text. So i don't need full page charts. Just a
square box, say 10x10cm with the chart... however, even though the chart is
small, i want it to be crystal clear when it's printed, not pixelised like a
bad picture off the internet. Also, i don't mind transfering data to the
word, by means of disclosing information to other people. I'm the only one
using it. Last, i don't mind the size of the resulting document. Even if its
100MB, fine by me. I'm only interested in quality. So what is the best way
to copy and paste it?

Thanks,
George

 

[Richard J.]

I find I get better results if the chart is drawn on a worksheet, not a
dedicated chart sheet. Copy the area of cells in which the chart sits, not
the chart area itself. (You'll need to set background colour white to
eliminate the cell borders.) In Word, Paste Special as either a Picture or
a Picture (Enhanced Metafile). I'm not claiming this is guaranteed to work
better (Office 97, which I use, isn't that consistent in my experience!),
but it's worth trying.

 

[Jon Peltier]

My preference is also to use embedded charts, but to copy the chart as a
picture, by holding Shift while selecting the Edit menu (Copy turns to
Copy Picture). I select the On Screen and Picture options; the Bitmap
option gives you the pixelized appearance in your printout. Then in the
target app, I just use Ctrl-V to paste the image of the chart.
(Actually, I have made myself macros that carry out exactly these
procedures for me.) I've found that a good compromise, working between
Excel and PowerPoint, is to size the charts in Excel wo that I can use
them full size in PowerPoint, or reduced to no less than 80%. This is
all covered in the web page I cited in my earlier post.

- Jon

 

[George K]

Thanks Jon,

I did that and it actually works. It transfers to Word pretty good. So, in
case anyone has the same question, when you copy as picture, there are
various combinations with the options. I pasted using all of the copy
combinations and printed them to see what i would get.
This is what i got: given as (Appearance - Size - Format)
Screen - Print - bitmap: VERY POOR QUALITY
Screen - Screen - bitmpa: VERY POOR QUALITY
Screen - Screen - picture: POOR QUALITY
Screen - Print - picture: GOOD BUT IMPERFECT (border line is a bit moved
from the filling colour)
Print - Screen - (third option deactivated) : EXCELLENT (appears smaller
than the next one)
Print - Print - (third option deactivated) : EXCELLENT (appears bigger)

I haven't tried to scale them down and print, (my secondary concern is to
put them in between the text like it'd be in a newspaper, next to the text)
but i guess the last two ones wouldn't distort much, or the least possible.


George