4 Basic concepts

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This chapter presents the basic concepts of working with think-cell. They apply to all chart types. For a quick tour refer to chapter ‘Introduction to think-cell’.

4.1

Toolbar and Elements menu

4.2

Rotating and flipping charts

4.3

Resizing smart-elements

4.4

Selecting charts and features

4.5

Formatting and style

4.1 Toolbar and Elements menu

After installing think-cell you will find the following toolbar in Office 2003 (or below):

In the Office 2007 ribbons the think-cell group can be found in the Insert tab.

As you see both menus are similar. Only the placement differs. In the following, we will refer to both menu styles by the term think-cell toolbar. Using the think-cell toolbar you can call most of think-cell’s functions.

The four symbols in the Basic menu represent basic shapes which can be used in your presentation as described in ‘Checkbox and Harvey ball’.

The chart objects can be found by clicking on Elements. We call them smart-elements due to their enhanced functionality. When you move your mouse pointer over one of the small arrows beside the symbols, you may notice them turning. That way the smart-element can be turned in the desired direction. By clicking on them, smart elements can be inserted like normal PowerPoint shapes.

The following smart-elements are available:

Furthermore there are  universal connectors to connect the smart-elements (see ‘Universal connectors’ for more information).

And finally More offers additional valuable tools (see ‘More tools’) to facilitate your daily work with PowerPoint.

4.2 Rotating and flipping charts

The small arrow markers around the stacked, clustered, 100%, line, area, waterfall and marimekko chart symbols in the Elements menu let you insert flipped (and – if applicable – rotated) versions of these charts. Most charts can also be rotated after insertion using a rotation handle. Simply select the chart and drag the rotation handle to the desired position: Click with the left mouse button on the rotation handle and, while holding the button down, drag the cursor to one of the four possible red-highlighted positions and release the button.

Note: If you want to flip the content of the rows (or columns) you have to use the  Flip Rows (or  Flip Columns) button in the internal data sheet (see ‘Reverse order in data sheet’).

4.3 Resizing smart-elements

When a smart-element is selected, resize handles are shown at the corners and in the center of the boundary lines. To resize a smart-element, drag one of these handles.

You can also set two or more smart-elements to the same width or height. This also works if you include PowerPoint shapes in your selection. First, select all objects that you want to set to the same width or height (see ‘Multi-selection’). Then, choose Same Height or Same Width from the context menu of a smart-element included in the selection. All objects will be resized to the same height or width, respectively.

The height or width of all elements is set to the largest height or width among the individual elements.

4.4 Selecting charts and features

think-cell’s smart-elements (charts) not only consist of the segments corresponding to the values in the data sheet. They also contain labels, axes, difference arrows, connectors and so forth. These elements and the data segments are called features and they form the parts of smart-elements.

You can distinguish a feature by the orange frame that appears when the mouse pointer is over it. When you click it, the frame turns blue to mark it as the currently selected feature. Additionally a floating toolbar appears. It contains a set of property controls you can use to give the feature a different look. It is a good idea to explore a newly-inserted chart to get an overview of the features it is made of and their properties.

When you right-click on a feature, its context menu appears. You use it to add additional features to the chart or remove those currently visible.

Buttons whose functions are unavailable for the current selection are greyed out. The context-menu of the entire smart-element is invoked by right-clicking the background of the chart.

Features always belong to their respective smart-element and can itself have further features. As an example, the vertical axis of a line chart is a feature of the chart itself, while the tickmarks along the axis are features of the axis. Consequently you use the chart’s context menu to switch on or off the vertical axis and the axis’ context menu to toggle whether tickmarks are shown.

There are several ways to remove a feature:

• Left-click the feature to select it and press the Delete or ← key on your keyboard.
• Right-click the feature to open the think-cell context menu. Click the  Delete button to remove the feature from the smart-element.
• Open the think-cell context menu that you used to add the feature. Click the same button again to remove it.

You cannot remove data segments from the chart in this way. All data segments shown are controlled by the internal data sheet. If you delete a cell of the internal data sheet, the corresponding data segment is removed from the chart.

Note: Buttons which toggle the presence of a feature, e.g. if series labels are shown in a chart or not, change their state accordingly. For example, after you have chosen Add Series Label to add series labels to the chart, the button changes to Remove Series Label. In the following, generally only the state of the button for adding the feature is shown.

Detailed information on all the available features is provided in the following chapters accompanying the respective chart types they apply to.

4.4.1 Multi-selection

You can quickly select a range of features that belong together – this is called logical multi-selection. It works the same way as with files in Microsoft Windows Explorer: Select the first feature in the desired range with a single left mouse button click, then hold down Shift and click the last feature in the range. When you move the mouse while holding down Shift, the range of features that is going to be selected is highlighted in orange.

To add single features to the selection, or to remove single features from the selection, hold down Ctrl while clicking. Again, this is the same way multi-selecting files works in Microsoft Windows Explorer.

Logical multi-selection is particularly useful if you want to colorize an entire data series, or if you want to change the formatting of a range of labels. You can even use multi-selection to paste text into multiple labels at once (see ‘Pasting text into multiple labels’).

4.4.2 Keyboard navigation

In many cases, you do not need the mouse to move the selection around on a slide. Instead, you can hold down the Alt key and use the cursor arrow keys ← → ↑ ↓ to move the selection.

• When the active selection refers to a PowerPoint shape or smart-element, Alt with cursor keys moves the selection to the next shape that is found in the arrow’s direction.
• When the active selection refers to a chart’s feature, Alt with cursor keys moves the selection to the next feature of the same kind in the chart.

However, you can only shift the focus to features of the same chart. Use the mouse again to select a feature of another chart.

4.4.3 Panning

When editing a slide in a zoomed view (like 400%) it is often hard to move the slide around and locate the region that you are working on. With think-cell installed, you can use the middle mouse button to “pan” the slide: Just grab the slide with your mouse pointer by clicking the middle mouse button and move it where you need it.

If your mouse has a wheel instead of a middle button, you can achieve the same effect by pressing down the wheel without turning it.

Note: You probably know that in PowerPoint you can zoom in and out using the mouse wheel with the Ctrl key held down. Together with the panning feature from think-cell, using zoomed views for slide design becomes easy and fast.

4.5 Formatting and style

Whenever you select a smart-element or feature by clicking on it a floating toolbar appears. It contains property controls to change the look of the feature. Only the controls which are applicable to the selected feature are shown in the floating toolbar.

In this chapter several general types of controls are described. Through the course of the following chapters detailed information is provided for all property controls of the floating toolbar in the context of specific chart and feature types.

4.5.1 Color and fill

The color control applies to features that have a fill color and to lines in line charts. It does not apply to text, because the text color and the text background color are always set automatically.

The list contains Like Excel Cell if you have enabled Use Excel Fill in the color scheme control (see ‘Color scheme’). To reset the fill color of a segment you colored manually choose Like Excel Cell to use Excel’s cell formatting.

If you need other colors than offered by the color control, select the Custom option from the dropdown box. You will then be presented with a color picker where you can choose any color you like:

Note: If you want to apply a color other than black or white, make sure that the slider for the brightness (on the very right of the dialog) is not set to minimum or maximum. When you move the slider up or down, you can watch how the color changes in the colored field on the bottom of the dialog.

think-cell adds the most recently used custom colors to the color control for quick access. You will find a divider line in the list of most recently used colors: The colors above the divider are saved within the presentation, so you can rest assured that your colleagues have them available when editing the presentation. The colors below the divider are available on your computer only, because you were using them in a different presentation. Both sections can hold up to 8 colors. When you use a 9th custom color, the first one is removed from the list.

You should use the color property only to highlight a single shape or segment. If you need to colorize an entire chart, use the color scheme property instead.

4.5.2 Color scheme

The color scheme control applies consistent coloring to all segments of a chart. The coloring is automatically updated when a series is added or removed. For these reasons, the color scheme property should be preferred over the color property to create chart shading. See section ‘Changing default colors and fonts’ for more information.

When you check Use Excel Fill think-cell applies the color from Excel’s cell formatting to the chart in PowerPoint. This is particularly convenient if you want to control the chart colors through your Excel data source in the case of a linked chart. For instance the Conditional Formatting can help you to color positive values green and negative values red.

If you have enabled Use Excel fill and the cell corresponding to a data segment does not have a fill color set as part of Excel’s cell formatting, then the appropriate color from the color scheme currently used is applied, i. e. the Excel fill color is applied „on top“ of the color scheme.

Note: Using Excel’s cell formatting to set a segment’s fill color does not work if you use conditional formatting rules in Excel and these rules contain references to other cells.

4.5.3 Line style

The line style control applies to the outlines of segments of column, bar and pie charts, lines in line charts, and to value lines (see ‘Value line’). You can also change a connector’s appearance using the line style control. In addition, the outline of the plot-area in all charts can be specified using the line style control.

4.5.4 Outline colors

You can change the color of an outline with this control. It works for segments of column, bar and pie charts.

4.5.5 Line scheme

The line scheme control specifies the appearance of lines in line charts. The supported line schemes apply consistent line styles and coloring to all lines in the chart.

4.5.6 Marker shape

The marker shape control can be used to add or change markers for data points in line and scatter charts. Note that the marker scheme control should be used instead of marker shapes to add consistent markers to all the data points in a line or scatter chart.

4.5.7 Marker scheme

The marker scheme control applies consistent markers to data points in scatter or line charts. The markers are automatically updated when data points, groups and series are added or removed. The marker scheme control should be preferred over the marker shape control when adding consistent markers to an entire line or scatter chart.

4.5.8 Changing default colors and fonts

think-cell can use PowerPoint’s scheme colors for many chart elements (e.g. axes, text, arrows, etc.). These colors as well as font definitions are always taken from the default colors and fonts of your presentation file. If the defaults are designed correctly, think-cell will follow seamlessly when you choose to switch the color scheme.

To adjust the default color settings, simply change your presentation’s color scheme:

In PowerPoint 2003

1.

In the toolbar, go to Format → Slide Design...

2.

In the task pane, click on the header of the task pane and switch to Slide Design - Color Schemes.

3.

On the bottom of the task pane, click on Edit Color Schemes....

4.

Adjust the colors to match your corporate design.

In PowerPoint 2007

1.

In the ribbon, go to Design.

2.

In the group Themes, click on Colors.

3.

From the drop-down list choose Create New Theme Colors...

4.

Adjust the colors to match your corporate design.

To adjust the default font settings, simply change your presentation’s slide master:

In PowerPoint 2003

1.

In the toolbar, go to View → Master then Slide Master.

2.

Adjust the fonts of the master text styles to match your corporate design.

In PowerPoint 2007

1.

In the ribbon, go to View.

2.

In the group Presentation Views, click on Slide Master.

3.

Adjust the fonts of the master subtitle style to match your corporate design.

In general, it is advisable to store these defaults in a PowerPoint template file (*.pot) and to derive all new presentations from this template file. Please refer to the PowerPoint help for information how to do this.

Previous chapter [3 Introduction to think-cell] Next chapter [5 Data entry]