Throughout April The PowerPoint Blog is focused on charts and data viz in PowerPoint. From 2016 is this great conversation about data viz, episode 19 of The Presentation Podcast. It definitely is in line with the blog series and worth a mention and a relisten (or read through of the show notes outline)!
Original blog post announcing the podcast episode is here.
Episode 19 replay is available, with show notes, here.
Looking back through previous posts, I read this one highlighting new chart types introduced to PowerPoint back in 2016 (original post here).
Today, of the 4 chart types introduced in 2016, I cannot recall ever using a Radar chart… and maybe 3-4 times the Treemap chart type. I do recall working on a Sunburst chart and using PowerPoint to create the basic chart, then ungrouping -> converting to shapes -> modifying to the custom styling & sizing needed -> and then producing a fantastic animated series. End result was great, it all started with a native PowerPoint chart. But 4 hours later, it was all custom art elements.
Question: thinking back to 2016, how often do you use these 4 chart types?
New Chart Types where added in PowerPoint 2016. There is bigger news than just some new styles. Microsoft is moving all charting to a new charting engine, and these new charts are coded with this new engine. Eventually, all legacy charts will be ported to the new charting engine, and, fortunately, this is still an in-process engine development (I am certain everyone will encounter a chart limitation depending on their chart data and the way they create charts) – so my take on things is “Yay new charts! But the new charting engine is not fully functional, so some options in the new charts are not fully functional yet.”
The good news is even though only subscription users can create these charts, all versions of PowerPoint (dating back to 2010 and Mac versions) can display chart types – editing and animation is somewhat limited when using previous versions…
Here are 4 of the new chart types currently available (we will continue to see more chart variations added over time, look for another new chart type in the February updates).
Follow these Steps:
Go to INSERT > CHART
A standard Chart.
That same data in the Bar Chart can instantly be updated.
This a great addition to the native PowerPoint chart options vs. going to external charting apps to develop.
This Chart is new to PowerPoint 2016 native chart options.
This standard Column chart with negative data.
-Troy @ TLC
This is from our Look Back series, rediscovering previous blog posts with relevant PowerPoint tips, tricks and examples. The original post from February 17th, 2016 can be viewed here.
If you’ve ever inserted a bar chart into PowerPoint and thought that the bars look too thin and awkwardly spaced — you’re not alone. The styling solution is available within PowerPoint, let’s walk through adjusting the bar thickness, and reducing that gap between bars.
Click on the chart to make sure it’s selected. Once it is, you’ll see the Chart Tools menu pop up at the top with two tabs: Design and Format. Along with the Format Data Series option, these are your go-to tabs for making all the visual adjustments you need.
To start adjusting your chart, right-click on one of the bars and select Format Data Series from the dropdown menu. This will bring up a panel on the right side of your screen, where you’ll find various options for fine-tuning your chart.
Within the Format Data Series panel, navigate to Series Options. Here, you’ll find the Gap Width slider, which controls the width or height or your bars. Reducing the Gap Width will make the bars skinny. Increasing the Gap fattens them up. This step will also reduce (or increase) the gap between each of the series bars. In the two examples shown, notice the gap in the between the Black Cars and Green Cars. Play with the slider and adjust it based on your preferences.
If you’re working with a clustered bar chart, you might also want to tweak the Series Overlap setting, located just below the Gap Width slider. Increasing the overlap percentage will cause the bars to slightly overlap, while decreasing it will add more separation. A range of 0% to 20% usually works well, but adjust as needed for your design.
Once your bars are spaced to your liking, it’s time to add those finishing touches. Experiment with colors, add data labels, or remove gridlines for a cleaner look. You can do all of this from the Chart Elements button or through the Chart Design tab. Little tweaks like these can make a big difference in how professional and polished your chart looks.
If your bars still aren’t quite right, try resizing the chart by dragging its edges. Sometimes a wider or taller chart gives those bars the breathing room they need to stand out. Adjusting the size can be an easy fix for better proportions.
And that’s it! Now your bars should look bold, clear, and way more polished. It’s all about finding that sweet spot with the gap width and overlap.
There is a secret when it comes to PowerPoint charts (bar charts, line charts, pie charts, etc.) The secret is: charts have two elements for sizing; the overall chart element bounding box (or frame), and inside that the chart bounding box.
Keep the chart’s overall size as is, which can be helpful for alignment on a slide, or when multiple charts are on a slide. Click the chart, then click the data to make the inner bounding box active. Resize and position as needed – within the outer bounding box of course!
The same goes for chart and axis titles and legends. Each is resizable and moveable within the overall chart bounding box.
TIP: use the legend preset location options; top, bottom, left, right to adjust all chart elements positions, then fine tune the legend size and position).
The functionality is there. It is finnicky. And now it is no longer a secret, hidden formatting option!
-The TLC Creative design team
TLC Creative’s theme for April is “PowerPoint charts”. And that had me looking way, way back to our past blog posts. Back in 2008 (17 years ago!) this posts contains tips to overcome the common frustration of “I edited the chart, but need the original version.”
The original post from November 3, 2008 is here.
—
For many projects I find myself ungrouping charts for custom animation or any number of other reasons. But what often happens is there is need to adjust the chart… oops it is now 50+ individual text boxes and autoshapes.
My solution is before I break apart a chart is to create a duplicate it.
Then shrink the duplicate to a miniature size.
I then move the miniature version off the slide so it is not seen during a slide show (or I have also ‘hidden’ it under another graphic).
Now I can ungroup the chart on the slide and do whatever the special needs are – and still have a backup option should the data need to be adjusted.
– Troy @ TLC
This is from our Look Back series, rediscovering previous blog posts with relevant PowerPoint tips, tricks and examples. The original post from November 3rd, 2008 can be viewed here.
Design principles do not change, and text formatting rules, such as Kerning, remain constant. If there is one huge observation the TLC Creative design team all noted, it was that Kerning controls in PowerPoint have not improved in over 15 years! Here is the post from December 2, 2007 that (unfortunately) has the same interface and options in PowerPoint in 2025…
—
If you have used desktop publishing software you are familiar with the concept of kerning. With (variable width) fonts, different pairs of characters are spaced differently. Kerning is the adjustment of spacing between letters to obtain a more pleasing appearance. The great news is that PowerPoint now has some basic kerning capabilities. Microsoft calls it ‘Character Spacing’ and here is the quick menu.
We can also get more fine control over the Character Spacing by opening the Character Spacing dialog window.
Here are a few examples of kerning in use. The top text is the standard, or normal, kerning. The second one is expanded and the third is condensed. All is still editable text and can be applied to select text within a single text box.
– Troy @ TLC
This is from our Look Back series, rediscovering previous blog posts with relevant PowerPoint tips, tricks and examples. The original post from December 3rd, 2007 can be viewed here.
PowerPoint can embed fonts! On the surface this sounds like an amazing idea, especially when it comes to sharing presentations among multiple people. However, there are plenty of downsides that make this feature something that the TLC Creative team avoids. But if you’re looking to embed fonts into a PowerPoint file, here’s how:
Select an embed option, save the presentation, and the fonts would be baked into the file itself.
SOUNDS GREAT – BUT…
Before deciding to embed a custom font, it’s best to check its licensing restrictions as some fonts won’t allow embedding.
There’s also other downsides of Embedded Fonts:
Best Practices:
Microsoft Cloud offers many fonts that can complement any PowerPoint presentation design. These fonts are not only visually appealing, but they are cloud based and require no installation. But, if you’ve ever struggled to find the perfect Microsoft font for your slide designs, there is another choice. Google fonts are a great resource that offers hundreds of options for all design projects. While these fonts can be used for PowerPoint presentations, there are some limitations that you need to consider.
If you do decide to go with Google, realize there is a big difference between Google fonts and Microsoft Cloud fonts. PowerPoint utilizes their unique Cloud fonts so every user, anywhere, can use these fonts without the worries of corruption. When these fonts are added to a PowerPoint presentation, the fonts are automatically downloaded and will not affect the look of the slides.
In order to use a Google font, you’ll have to download from the company’s website and install into your computer’s system. Also, each additional user of this presentation will have to install the same fonts to display properly.
There is a catch though – PowerPoint doesn’t natively support variable fonts.
That all being said, at TLC Creative, we do not use Google fonts as an option in PowerPoint. Unless it is a custom font from the client, we stick to the Microsoft Cloud choices to avoid problems during presentations.
Variable fonts are amazing because they let one font file handle multiple styles like weight, width, and slant. This means you can have a ton of design flexibility without needing a separate file for each style. While PowerPoint doesn’t support variable fonts just yet there are options. You’ll just need to download the font in its variable format (like regular, bold, italic, semi-bold, etc.) and install it manually to display properly.
Even though you can’t fully use variable fonts in PowerPoint, you can still find something from Google Fonts that will work.
1. Go to the Google Fonts website
2. In the left column, use the filter option to display only variable fonts under Technology.
3. Select a variable font. We’ll use Oswald as an example. You will be able to view all the weight variations to see what is available. In the upper right select the blue “Get font” button.
4. In the next window, download the .zip file.
5. Find the downloaded font file on your computer and extract the .zip file.
WARNING: when obtaining fonts from Google to install on your system, you will download a .zip file. When the .zip file is extracted, you might see a font in the main folder that includes “VariableFont” in the name. Ignore this file! Open the folder named “Static” and install these fonts instead.
6. Within the font folder, open the static folder.
7. Select the desired variable fonts and right click to install.
Now when you open PowerPoint, the newly installed Google fonts will be available in the dropdown menu. (Note: if you have PowerPoint open while you are installing, you will need to close and re-start for fonts to show)
Even though PowerPoint isn’t fully on board with variable fonts, but we are hopeful that Microsoft adopts Variable fonts soon! You can still enhance your presentations with Google Fonts. Don’t let this hold you back. Get creative and find the perfect font for your next presentation.
– The TLC Creative Presentation Design Team
The latest episode of The Presentation Podcast, episode 218 – “Navigating the Data Visualization Landscape: Tools, Tips, and Techniques with Ann K. Emery” was a wonderful conversation about Data Viz, specifically around displaying content on slides (it is a great conversation – listen to it here!). Over the past 19 years of PowerPoint and presentation related posts here at The PowerPoint Blog, there is a rich library of chart, graph, table and general data viz related posts. As example, this post from September 2012, “Help – This Shape is Stuck in the Chart“. And this is still a common frustration for many people as they work on slides. Allow us to share this old post, so that you may troubleshoot, and get back to focusing the audience’s attention on the key data (eg. Data Viz).
—
Let’s explore this common frustration that appears to be bug in PowerPoint, but is in fact the way PowerPoint charts and graphs work. There is a good reason for this feature, but for most it seems to be bug. Which is it, depends on your preference.
Here is the scenario. A chart is on a slide:
With the chart selected, you decide to add a callout box to highlight the important data in the chart.
The new shape is inserted, editable and look like what you wanted. But the shape is actually within the chart boundaries. In this case you select the new shape, and the chart is also still. Select the chart, and the shape is also part of the selection.
The dilemma is the new callout shape can be edited and moved – but it can only move within the chart boundaries. It is also connected to the chart for animation.
What PowerPoint has done, which is actually by design, is inserted the shape as part of the chart element, because the chart was selected while the shape was inserted. If the chart is moved, the shape moves. If the chart is deleted, the shape is deleted. But the shape does not directly interact with the chart. As example the chart styling options do not change the shape styling. Chart animations do not animate the new shape(but animations can be added and controlled for the shape, they are part of the chart element animation).
For some, this is a feature – the ability to tie new shapes to a chart. For others, it is a bug – they did not want the shape tied to the chart.
SOLUTION: If you want the shape outside of the chart, the easiest fix is to select the shape (select the chart, then select the shape within the chart) >> copy >> delete >> unselect the chart >> paste. Now the slide has a chart element and a separate shape element.
– Troy @ TLC
This is from our Look Back series, rediscovering previous blog posts with relevant PowerPoint tips, tricks and examples. The original post from September 19, 2012 can be viewed here.
Back a decade+ ago, onscreen fonts being “smooth” (aka anti-aliasing) was a big conversation – and concern. Windows did not have a good story on its display technology and PowerPoint relied on Windows for content rendering. In 2016, Microsoft had recently updated Windows the display engine, and PowerPoint was finally able to confidently display text anti-aliased (eg. “smooth”). Happily, this is not a conversation much today, as smooth font rendering and display from PowerPoint is taken for granted.
This post is just a good reminder that the PowerPoint team continues to improve its software, and general knowledge of what anti-aliased display rendering is (here’s a thought, do design schools even address this issue today…?).
—
Picking a font style is important. Should it be a “safe” font, a professional font, a bold font, etc.? Any font style needs to display well and anti-aliasing is a big part of that. So, what is anti-aliasing?
The simple description of anti-aliasing is that it makes fonts display with smooth curves and angles, not jagged, low res looking edges. So if “anti-aliased ” is smooth, the opposite – hard edged fonts would make sense to be called “aliased.” However, the better term is “bit-mapped.”
Here’s a visual showing Aliased and Anti-Aliased Text:
Aliased (Jagged, Hard Edges):
Anti-Aliased (Smooth Edges):
The good news is PowerPoint applies anti-aliasing to text (which has not always been the case). But it is applied when in slide show. Objects and text may appear to have jagged edges (aliased) when editing. Anti-aliasing is also applied when printing, but through a different ‘engine’ than when presented. So, when running as a slideshow, everything is smooth, when printing, everything is (almost always smooth), when editing, it may not look as smooth.
In addition, Microsoft Windows OS has its own term and feature for anti-aliasing called ClearType. ClearType is basically Microsoft’s technology for doing anti-aliasing and making fonts have nice smooth curves and angles. ClearType is currently used by web browsers (all web browsers) and the operating system dialogs. But not Microsoft Office at this time.
On PowerPoint, when using the PowerPoint web app it is viewed through a browser for editing and slideshow. So, all text is anti-aliased in both views because the Microsoft ClearType works with all major web browsers.
So, should you be worried about anti-aliasing or smooth fonts with PowerPoint? Yes, it is a concern, but starting with Windows 10 and PowerPoint 2007 all fonts display anti-aliased with presented as a slideshow – and I can attest to being happy with text that is projected 20′ tall is HD, is smooth, and overall display very well (with the caveat that there is room for it to be better!).
-Troy @ TLC
This is from our Look Back series, rediscovering previous blog posts with relevant PowerPoint tips, tricks and examples. The original post from May 13th, 2016 can be viewed here.