Our first three TechTIPs were like athletes doing warm-ups, but now you're warmed-up, and ready for a PowerTIP!  These steps assume the reader knows when to enter OK, Save, etc.

1. Open a blank presentation in PowerPoint, and select content BLANK, as the new slide.

2. Open any Excel file, select some content, and then Edit/Copy

3. Switch to PowerPoint and Edit/Paste Special/Paste Link. (This inserts a picture of the clipboard contents into your presentation. Paste Link creates a shortcut to the source file so that changes to the source file will be reflected in your presentation.) Go back to the Excel file and make some noticeable change to the contents.

4. Save the Excel file

5. Switch to PowerPoint

6. The change you made to the Excel file, should be updated in the PowerPoint file.

Note: Before Saving your PowerPoint file, select Edit/Links, and select all the Links and choose Manual. Otherwise when your PowerPoint file is opened you will be asked to Update your Linked files.

EXTRA CREDIT - If you are in the PPT and need to edit the XLS file, just double click the graph. This is an application of Object Linking & Embedding (OLE), and Dynamic Data Exchange (DDE), OLE/DDE.

Why is this useful?

For anyone that does a regular update for the Board of Directors, Operations Review, Sales Review, etc. where the format is fairly fixed, but expecting updated data from the previous period - this is very powerful.

It doesn't make sense to spend much time on creating an Excel file that will only be used once. But if you (or your subordinates) can reuse that Excel file many times, it does justify carefully creating an Excel file for this purpose. The key step is really just Copy, and then Paste Special/Paste Links. The rest is mechanics, and good housekeeping - stuff you probably already know...