Adding Charts

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Adding Charts

You'll want to add a chart to a slide that has plenty of room for the chart, though you can add a chart to any slide. Of the built-in master slides, the ones that are most appropriate for charts are Title - Top, Title & Bullets - Left, Title & Bullets - Right, and of course Blank, which is a good master slide to use for charts that need to be as large as possible.

To add a chart to a slide

1.
Display the slide where you want to add a chart.

2.
Click the Chart button on the toolbar, or choose Insert > Chart.

A sample chart appears on the slide ( Figure 8.4 ) and the Chart Data Editor and the Chart Inspector open .

Figure 8.4. This sample chart appears whenever you add a chart to a slide.


3.
In the Chart Inspector, choose the chart type that you want from the pop-up menu ( Figure 8.5 ).

Figure 8.5. Use the pop-up menu in the Chart Inspector to change between the eight chart types.


4.
Enter your data into the Chart Data Editor.

For more information about using the Chart Data Editor, see the next section.

Tips

  • If you Option-click the Chart button in the toolbar, the pointer turns into a crosshair, which you can then drag on the Slide Canvas to create a chart any size that you want ( Figure 8.6 ). Size tags will appear as you drag to let you know how large the chart is.

    Figure 8.6. After you Option-click the Chart button in the toolbar, you can draw a chart any size you want on the slide.


  • You can add as many charts as you want to a slide, subject only to how many will fit on the slide, and to your sense of good taste.


Charting Alternatives

Keynote's charting abilities are decent, but they are hardly complete. For example, Keynote doesn't provide 3-D charts, and lacks many chart types found in other charting programs. Keynote also lacks the ability to create combination charts, which contain more than one chart type. If you need more charting power than Keynote can provide, you'll need to turn to other applications that can create charts.

Microsoft Excel has many chart types that Keynote lacks, including 3-D, surface, stock, radar, scatter, bubble, and doughnut charts. Excel gives you control over the transparency of chart objects, which allows you to create some nice effects ( Figure 8.7 ). Because Excel's charting abilities are coupled with a powerful spreadsheet, you can do all of your calculations in Excel, chart your results, dress up the chart using Excel's advanced tools, and paste the finished chart into Keynote.

Figure 8.7. Microsoft Excel can create these nifty 3-D area charts with transparency that Keynote can't match.


Chartsmith, from Blacksmith (www.blacksmith.com), is a standalone charting application for Mac OS X ( Figure 8.8 ). It creates all of the Keynote chart types, plus many more, such as base-error, histogram, XY, and intensity scatter charts. As a nice bonus, you can export Chartsmith documents in Keynote 1.0 format, making it especially easy to get charts into your presentations (Keynote 2 reads Keynote 1.0 files just fine). You can even select a particular Keynote theme, and Chartsmith will use that theme when it exports.

Figure 8.8. Chartsmith does a terrific job of creating combination charts with error bars and a trend line. This chart can then be exported as a Keynote file.



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Keynote 2 for Mac OS X. Visual QuickStart Guide
Keynote 2 for Mac OS X. Visual QuickStart Guide
ISBN: 321197755
EAN: N/A
Year: 2005
Pages: 179

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