At least one Charley File workbook for New Excel. This has an xlsx extension and is for PC Excel 2007, Mac Excel 2008, and after.

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1 Getting Started By Charley Kyd Welcome to Charley s Swipe Files! My personal collection of charts and tables clipped from magazines and newspapers is a valuable resource for me. I hope you find this growing collection of Excel charts and tables to be even more valuable for you. If you don t find this collection useful, please tell me, so I can correct the problem. If you do find it useful, please tell your friends and co-workers who use Excel, Word, PowerPoint, or HTML. Workbook Overview Each set of my swipe files includes at least three workbooks: At least one Charley File workbook for New Excel. This has an xlsx extension and is for PC Excel 2007, Mac Excel 2008, and after. At least one Charley File workbook for Classic Excel. This has an xls extension and is for PC Excel 2003, Mac Excel 2004, and before. The workbook Charley's Swipe File Guide.xls, which shows images of all past and the next few swipe files. Use this file to find the workbook you need. The workbooks with tables typically have only two worksheets, a Copyright worksheet and a Report worksheet. The workbooks with charts typically have three worksheets: a Copyright worksheet, a Report worksheet, and a Figure Data Support (FDS) worksheet, which typically is named A. And some workbooks include a Control sheet, which contains settings intended for a complete report, not just for a specific figure.

2 The Secret to Great-Looking Chart Figures in Excel Most Excel users think of a chart as a single unit, which they create and position in a worksheet. But that s not the way to create great-looking chart figures. Instead, when you examine my swipe-files, you ll see that you typically must combine one or more charts with the cells behind the charts. For example, this figure is from CharleyFile-0003, the third set of swipe files you ll receive. I included the row and column headers with this figure to show you that the titles are entered in cells, not in the chart object. The swipe file below, from CharleyFile-0002, offers an exception to this rule. If you re a new subscriber, you ll see why in about two weeks. It s All Greek to Me When I created my Excel Dashboard e-book and templates, I used common financial titles like Sales or Profits in my samples. I did so because I had to use titles of some kind, and Sales is about as general as you can get in a business setting. But customers frequently asked if I had any nonfinancial dashboards. To avoid this confusion, Charley s Swipe Files use greeking, as shown in the nearby figures. According to Wikipedia, Even though using lorem ipsum often arouses curiosity because of its resemblance to classical Latin, it is not intended to have meaning. Where text is visible in a document, people tend to focus on the textual content rather than upon overall presentation, so publishers use lorem ipsum when displaying a typeface or design elements and page layout in order to direct the focus to the publication style and not the meaning of the text. In spite of its basis in Latin, use of lorem ipsum is often referred to as greeking, from the phrase it's all greek to me, which indicates that this is not meant to be readable text. I hope that only my text will be greek to you, and not my Excel displays!

3 How to Use These Files in Your Presentations A few of my swipe files are complete reports. To use them, merely add your data and adjust the report as needed in Excel. The other swipe files contain figures that you can use in Excel, Word, PowerPoint, HTML, and other applications. After you enter your data, you can use these files in different ways, depending on your program. The first step is to flip through the figures and find the report you need. One way to do this is to Page Down through the contents of Charley's Swipe Files.xls, which contains images in a printable column. Also, if you print the instructions that come with each set of files, you can add them to a three-ring binder and flip through the pages. Then, after you open the workbook you need, you can modify it to fit your needs, and then take one of the following actions Copy and Paste a Swipe-File Bitmap to Word, PowerPoint, or HTML If you don t plan to update your presentation frequently, the easiest approach is to copy and paste an image of the figure to your presentation as a bitmap. To copy the image, select the range in your spreadsheet that contains the figure, then in Classic Excel, hold down your Shift key, then choose Edit, Copy Picture. (If your Shift key isn t down, you won t see Copy Picture when you choose Edit.) Excel 2007, choose Home, Clipboard, the down arrow for Paste, As Picture, Copy as Picture. Excel 2010, choose Home, Clipboard, the down arrow for Copy, Copy as Picture. Then, in the Copy Picture dialog, select As shown on screen and Bitmap. And then choose OK. Note: In all versions of Excel, when you copy an image of a range surrounded by a border, the left and top borders are NOT included in the copy of the image. The way to get around this problem is to make the first column to the left of the figure and the first row above the figure very narrow, then include that row and column in the range you copy. Most swipe files have the narrow row and column already set. After you ve copied the image, activate Word, PowerPoint, or your HTML editor and paste the image to your program.

4 Link or Embed a Swipe-File Figure in Word or PowerPoint When you link or embed an Excel range, you give your document access to an underlying workbook. Embedding adds a copy of your workbook to the Word or PowerPoint file. To update the image, you double-click on the image in your presentation and make changes to the workbook that your application opens. You ll probably NOT take this approach. Linking establishes a link to an existing workbook. With this approach, when you update the workbook you update your presentation. This is the approach you ll probably take. So, here s how to set up an image in Word or PowerPoint that s linked to a workbook: 1. Select a range in your worksheet to copy, just as you do when you copy a bitmap. 2. Activate your presentation in Word or PowerPoint, and then select where you want the linked image to appear. 3. Activate the Paste Special dialog in Word or PowerPoint. The way you do this depends on your version of the product. In Word 2010, you ll find Paste Special as shown at the right. PowerPoint 2010 is similar. 4. In the Paste Special dialog, choose Paste Link and Microsoft Office Excel Worksheet Object, as shown here: 5. Choose OK.

5 To test your linked object, change a value in the swipe-file data, and you should see an equivalent change in Word or PowerPoint. Use a Camera Object (Linked Picture) to Display a Swipe-File Figure in Excel Linking is a great solution if you want to set up a live image of an Excel figure in Word or PowerPoint. But you can t use the same approach to set up a linked image of an Excel figure in Excel. However, there s a similar solution that can work well in many situations: the Camera tool. Excel has offered the Camera tool for nearly 20 years. But unless you ve read my e-book, Dashboard Reporting With Excel, you ve probably never heard of it. In recent generations of Excel, the Camera object also is called a Linked Picture or a Picture Link, depending on your version. With that additional name, Microsoft also has given us a way to generate an image that s somewhat like the linking described in the previous section. As in the previous steps, select the range you want to copy, then copy the range. Select the cell where you want the top-left corner of the pasted image to be placed. Then in Classic Excel, hold down the Shift key then choose Edit, Paste Picture Link. Excel 2007, choose Home, Clipboard, then click the arrow for the Paste Icon. Choose As Picture, Paste Picture Link. Excel 2010, choose Home, Clipboard, then click the down arrow for the Paste icon. In the Other Paste Options section, choose the Linked Picture icon. In all cases, you paste an image of the source range but it s a LIVE picture. As the source range changes, so does your picture. So it s somewhat like pasting a linked image in Word or PowerPoint This is a great tool, with one exception: Excel has a history of bugs associated with the Camera tool. Here are the advantages and bug-related limitations for various versions of Excel: Classic Excel, Excel 2007, and Mac Excel 2008 Linked pictures work great with lists and tables. This is because they allow you to position tables anywhere you want in a report without worrying about the row-and-column structure of your report worksheet. Also, as you insert or delete rows or columns, the dimensions of your Camera object automatically adjust to the new dimensions of your source range. However, if you point a linked picture at a range that contains a chart, Excel will trash your chart when you print or print-preview your report. So NEVER point a Camera object at a chart in these versions of Excel.

6 Also, Excel 2007 and 2008 don t allow you to place a chart object on top of a Camera object. This usually doesn t cause significant problem, however. It s more of an irritant. Excel 2010 and Mac Excel 2011, Initial Version Excel 2010 fixed all the bugs mentioned for previous versions of Excel. So you now can use linked pictures with charts, which is a great improvement. However, Microsoft added a new bug: If you change the dimensions of your range after you set up a picture link, the picture image doesn t change sizes in response to the changes. Instead, the image distorts to shoehorn all content in the resized source range into the original-sized Camera object. Excel 2010, Service Pack 1 At this writing, SP1 for Excel is in its testing phase. But I ve been told that the image-sizing bug has been fixed in this version. If that s true, the Camera tool will become VERY useful for displaying both charts and tables. Combine Your Report and Swipe-File Workbooks In general, it s easy to combine your report and swipe-file workbooks. But if you still use Classic Excel, you ll need to take an extra step to set up the figure s colors. Here s how to combine your report and swipe-file workbooks Step 1: Open both your report workbook and your swipe-file workbook, and arrange them sideby-side. Step 2: Select all worksheets except the Copyright worksheet in your swipe-file workbook. (To do so, select the left-most worksheet tab you want to include in the group; hold down your Shift key; then click on the right-most tab.) Step 3: Click and drag the active tab in the group of worksheets from your swipe-file workbook to your report workbook. This drags the entire group of worksheets. After you do so, Excel might display a message that begins, A formula or sheet you want to move or copy contains the name. Click on Yes in all cases. (Note: If you merely copy the sheets, rather than moving them, the report will link to sheets in your swipe file workbook, not to the one in your report workbook.) Step 4: Close your swipe-file workbook without saving it. Step 5: Save your report workbook as a new file. If you use Classic Excel, you ll need to adjust your swipe-file colors, as I describe in the following section.

7 After you adjust the colors, or if you use New Excel, you now need to add the swipe-file figure to your existing report. To do so, treat the swipe-file figure like any chart and worksheet that you would create for yourself. Documentation with each swipe-file figure offers specific suggestions. How to Manage Your Workbook Colors The way that the swipe files manage colors depends on the version of Excel you use. New Excel Colors Swipe-file workbooks for New Excel do NOT use theme colors, for two reasons. First, by ignoring themes I get much better control over the colors when I create swipe files. Second, when you copy a swipe file to a New Excel report workbook, your swipe file will retain its original colors, rather than adapting colors to the current theme. This saves work. After you copy a swipe file figure, feel free to apply theme colors to it, if that s what you prefer. Classic Excel Colors Classic Excel allows a workbook to use any colors you want, but a workbook can use a total of only 56 colors. The default colors for these 56 positions are shown in the color palette below. (Choose Tools, Options, Color to modify this palette.) Therefore, in Classic Excel, when you assign a color to a cell or some other object, you re not actually assigning a color. Instead, you re assigning a color position as defined by this palette. Then Excel displays the color currently assigned to that position. That is, Classic Excel s color palette works much like a style setting. Because of Classic Excel s approach to color management, swipe-file figures usually change colors when you copy them to your report workbook. This is because certain color positions in Classic Excel swipe files will use different colors than those assigned to your original report file. This is an easy problem to fix. If your report workbook contains only default colors, it s usually safe to apply the swipe file s color scheme to your report. To do so, make sure that both your report workbook and the swipe file workbook are open; activate your report workbook and choose Tools, Options; in the Color tab; select your swipe file name in the Copy Colors From dropdown list box; then choose OK. If your report workbook contains custom colors, you have two choices:

8 First, if you want your swipe-file figure to use those colors, the fix is easy. You just select each colored item in the new swipe-file figure in your workbook and assign the custom color you want. Second, if you want to keep the original colors in the swipe file, you change the colors assigned to the positions that the swipe-file figure uses. This figure shows the color palette for CharleyFile-0004 Months.xls, which is one of the swipe files you ll receive in the fourth set. If you compare this palette with the previous one, you ll see that I changed the colors for the selected cell and for the three below it. For all swipe files, the unique colors for Classic Excel all will be found in this general area of your color palette. So here s how to restore the swipe-file colors: First, you need to find the color codes for the first color position I used. So with the original swipe-file workbook active, choose Tools, Options. In the Color tab, select the first color you want to set up in your report workbook. Choose Modify. In the Custom tab, make a note of the Red, Green, and Blue color settings. Press Esc to return to the Ready mode. Next, you need to assign these RGB settings to the same position in your report. To do so, choose Tools, Options. In the Color tab, select the same color position as in the swipe file. Choose Modify. In the Custom tab, enter the Red, Green, and Blue color settings. Choose OK until you reach the Ready mode. Work your way down the first column of the color palette, repeating this process until all the custom colors have been set up. Again, if you don t find my swipe files useful, please tell me so I can correct the problem. If you do find them useful, please tell your friends and co-workers who use Excel, Word, PowerPoint, or HTML. All the best, Charley Kyd Kyd@ExcelUser.com