We all have faced the big scary process of manually drawing charts in PowerPoint. Assembling data into a report is one thing, the next is presenting that data in an easily understandable form.

This can be a long and difficult process. Fear not, because busy consultants have some top-notch tools to assist in their chart drawing process.

These tools have the algorithm to find exactly what your data means and display them in an organized and neat order. One such tool that management consultants all over the world use are think-cell.

Why Think-Cell?

Most management consultants use PowerPoint to show their project plans to their clients. These project plans can be high-level details and PowerPoint offers dozens of little icons that you can fiddle with to compose a chart but this can be tiring.

A suggested alternative is to make the whole project plan in a PowerPoint slide creating charts using think-cell, and this just takes a few minutes.

And you can create amazing charts using think-cell.

How to Visualize Charts for Corporate Presentations the Right Way: A Step-by-Step Guide

Think-Cell is a targeted platform for software dealing with business documents like Microsoft Office. It is a powerful charting and layout software which makes slide creation simple and quick with a quality finish.

The most challenging and common problem marketing professionals, consultants, analysts and a lot of other professionals face with creating charts in PowerPoint is: connecting that chart to Excel, modifying each element in the chart and have easy access to the elements that reflect common business metrics (Compound annual Growth rates-CAGR).

There are many frequently used chart types and elements that are missing and no automatic placement for them in PowerPoint. This is solved with think-cell.

Leading consulting firms found out that chart production using think-cell saves 70% working time on charts.

Features in Think-Cell:

Think-Cell is seamlessly integrated with PowerPoint and has more than 40 chart types with data-driven visual elements and some other exclusive features. These can be accessed from the think-cell ribbon group with a one-click manipulation through your mouse.

Some of the chart types covered by Think-Cell are listed below:

Charting

Stacked Column and Bar Chart

A stacked column or bar chart can be easily created using Think-Cell. It is the simplest chart type but adding the labels and decorations in PowerPoint can be time-consuming. Using Think-Cell this time factor is eliminated.

Waterfall Chart

A waterfall chart has Positive and negative values. With just a select, drag and release feature in think-cell, you can easily create a waterfall chart and enter the positive and negative values in the datasheet to display the correct chart.

 

Gantt Chart

Gantt charts are a little more complex but think-cell makes it simple. These charts are calendar based and think-cell incorporates built-in calendar features with a self-adjusting time scale.

Mekko Chart

A Mekko chart is a 2-Dimensional 100% chart. All the features of a column chart are included except that in Mekko chart, the width of the column can be adjusted according to the data.

Scatter and Bubble Chart

Labeling of Scatter and bubble charts are done automatically with think-cell even with independent labels per scatter point.

Bubble Chart

Pie Chart

You can rotate pie elements simply by dragging their handles at 90,0,120 or 270.

Line Chart

Some advanced options like interpolation, error bars and date-based axis formatting are included.

Clustered Chart

Clustered charts in think-cell have the same advanced options as stacked column and bar charts. The and arrows can be added that are calculated automatically and emphasize important relationships.

100% Chart

You can quickly mark elements of the same type, and use Think-Cell’s intelligent logical selection mechanism.

Area Chart

Think-Cell has advanced options such as the customization of axis tickmarks, axis range, and grid lines.

Area 100%

With think-cell, you can freely decide whether to enter percentages or absolute values.

Here is how to visualize charts for corporate presentations the right way!

Layout features

Process flow

When creating a process flow in PowerPoint you need to add the different elements like chevrons, pentagons onto the slide combining them to make complex layouts. In Think-Cell however we can add these elements and they automatically snap to each other and also stay together even when their position and size are changed and they adapt to make their content fit.

Agenda

Making an agenda in Think-Cell is as easy as adding chapter slides to your deck, typing the chapter titles. When changing titles and reordering slides in the slide sorter Think-Cell automatically update the agenda and take care of the rest.

Excel data features

Data Links

Think-Cell has an inbuilt excel datasheet with smart Excel data links where you can create and update think-cell charts in PowerPoint from your excel data. These data links help keep consistency and correctness especially working with visual elements.

Data extraction from chart images

An important feature in Think-Cell is that you can extract data values and category labels from any column chart or bar chart.

Data rounding

It has been a problem in PowerPoint to round summations. Think-Cell’s rounding function has a much better improvement than the standard Excel rounding and can ensure that the rounded totals match the total of the rounded addends and also can solve complex rounding problems.

How Easy is it to use Think-Cell?

Suppose you need a simple stack chart like this:

• Go to the insert tab on the PowerPoint ribbon
• Look for the Think-cell group and click on the elements button
• Choose the desired chart type (stacked chart)
• Place the chart according to the orange frame. Click on the location to place
  the chart
• If you need to resize, simply drag one of the handles of the blue frame
• For entering the data you can double click on the chart to open the datasheet
• The chart is updated as you type the values on the data sheet
• If you want to add or remove any labels, you can right-click on the chart and choose to remove category labels or add category labels accordingly

For differentiating the segments of the chart

• Click on the first segment of the series
• Hold the Shift key and drag to the last segment of the series
• A floating toolbar helps to choose the color of the segments

For making data numbers precise with decimals

• Click onto any label whose precision you want to change
• Select the desired format from the drop-down menu from the floating toolbar
• Or you can type in a sample number with the required format
• The precision change will apply to all labels of the same type

These are the simple basic blocks to using Think-Cell with PowerPoint and hopefully, you can explore more features through this short tutorial.

Some other tools and services to consider:
Zebra bi
TeamSlide

It is only evident through the ease of use that Think-Cell interface provides that we can see why some of the top Consulting Companies utilize it for their Charting needs. You can save a lot of time in creating charts for your PowerPoint slides and focus on other elements and content in your presentation.

Get help from our experienced PowerPoint experts who have used Think-Cell to design complex Professional charts for our Clients who needed a turn-over time within a day.

Learn more about the latest charts in Office.

Quick Guide to Using New Chart Types in Office 2016