Most of my work is confidential (fund raising pitches, sales presentations), but this presentation is not. The style is also a bit different from my usual work, there are hardly any numbers inside. The presentation is meant to run at an exhibition booth on a plasma screen. I adjusted the look and feel of the presentation to match the style of the client Optimove. The video below is running at a higher speed than the actual presentation.

Yesterday’s post triggered this question: how to export a chart from Excel to PowerPoint? The short answer: copy the data not the chart.

Standard Excel charts are ugly, they have the wrong formatting, they have the wrong colors, axis labels are in the wrong place, data is not rounded up and too precise. Copying and pasting an Excel chart into PowerPoint is also copying all that ugliness. Even worse, copying and pasting it as a picture might make it look blurry.

Usually I blog about grander things than software tricks. Today is an exception with a help-desk-type post. This thing drove me crazy in Keynote: a double drop shadow that just did not want to go away in the data labels of a chart. If I am struggling to find it, there must be a few other people out there getting annoyed by this. Here is a video that explains how to get rid of these ghost shadows. The fonts button at the top right of the screen has some hidden options.

Passing a device with your demo app around the audience is not enough, even for a small group of people: