3 Introduction to think-cell
In this chapter, a step-by-step tutorial will show you how to create a chart from a scribble like this:
A more elaborate presentation of the basic concepts of think-cell and details on the various chart types can be found in chapter ‘Basic concepts’ and the following chapters.
- 3.1
- Inserting a new chart
- 3.2
- Adding and removing labels
- 3.3
- Entering chart data
- 3.4
- Styling the chart
3.1 Inserting a new chart
With think-cell installed, you will find the following toolbar in PowerPoint:
In PowerPoint 2007 the toolbars have been replaced by the Ribbon. The think-cell group can be found in the Insert tab.
Note: In the following, we will use the term think-cell toolbar to refer to the think-cell toolbar in Office XP and 2003 and the think-cell ribbon group in Office 2007.
The think-cell toolbar offers a number of drawing objects with extended functionality and built-in intelligence. These objects are called smart-elements, as opposed to ordinary PowerPoint objects (sometimes also referred to as AutoShapes).
Inserting a smart-element into your presentation is very similar to inserting a PowerPoint shape. To create a new smart-element on a slide, go to the think-cell toolbar and click the Elements button in PowerPoint 2007 or the think-cell button in earlier versions of PowerPoint. Then, select the required chart type.
Note: In the following, we will use the term Elements button to refer to the button Elements in PowerPoint 2007, the button Charts in Excel 2007 and the button think-cell in Office XP and 2003.
You may notice small arrow markers around some of the chart types. Moving the mouse over these markers lets you select rotated and flipped versions of these chart types.
In our example, we want to insert a column chart, which is represented by this
button: 
If you unintendedly have selected some smart-element, you can always
- press the Esc key to cancel the insert operation, or
- re-click the Elements button to select a different smart-element.
Once you have chosen a smart-element, a rectangle will appear with the mouse
cursor, indicating where the element will be inserted on the slide. You have two
options when placing the smart-element on the slide:
- Click the left mouse button once to place the element with the default width and height.
- Hold down the left mouse button and drag the mouse to create a custom-sized element. Some smart-elements have a fixed width for insertion; in this case, you can only alter the height. You can always change the size of the smart-element later.
When you are inserting or resizing a smart-element, you will notice that it “snaps” to certain locations.
The snapping behavior serves the following purposes:
- With snapping, objects can be quickly and easily aligned. The highlighting of a border of some other object on the slide indicates that the smart-element you are moving is currently aligned with that object.
- When resizing a smart-element, it snaps to its preferred size. In the case of a column chart, its preferred width depends on the number of columns. If you have manually changed the size of the chart, you can easily change it back to the default width: It will snap when you come close enough.
As in PowerPoint, you can hold down the Alt key to move the mouse freely without snapping.
The smart-element is automatically selected after insertion, as indicated by a blue highlighted outline. If the smart-element you want to modify is not selected, you can select it by clicking on it. Although the highlighting of selected smart-elements looks different, selecting smart-elements works the same way as selecting ordinary PowerPoint shapes.
3.2 Adding and removing labels
After inserting a new column chart, both category labels and series labels are shown automatically. There are several ways to remove and add labels. The easiest way to remove a single label is to select it and press the Delete key. The easiest way to remove all labels of a particular type is to select the respective button from the chart’s context menu.
To remove the series label like in our example column chart, click 
Remove
Series Label in the smart-element’s context menu. To access the context menu of a
smart-element, move the mouse to a point within the smart-element’s rectangle
where there are no other objects and click the right mouse button. Read more about
editing text labels in chapter ‘Text labels’.
3.3 Entering chart data
When you select the column chart, a data sheet button 
is displayed in the
bottom right corner of the chart.
Click the data sheet button, or simply double-click the chart, to open the data sheet. The data sheet opens automatically after insertion of a new chart. Now, enter the data from our example column chart into the data sheet. Type in only the actual numbers. Do not round numbers or calculate totals: think-cell will do this for you. For most chart types, you can simply input the numbers the way you see them in the scribble, from left to right and from top to bottom. The tab key Tab can be used, just as in Microsoft Excel, to conveniently move to the next column in a row, and the enter key Enter can be used to jump to the first column of the next row.
The data sheet for our example column chart looks like this:
Note that the chart on the slide instantly updates to reflect the changes in the data sheet. It even grows and shrinks depending on the area of the data sheet that you use. Years are automatically inserted as category labels in the first row of the data sheet. The sequence of years is automatically continued when you start entering data in the following column.
Having entered the data, our example chart looks like this:
As you can see, think-cell has already performed a good deal of work to make the chart look “right”. In particular, it automatically placed all labels and added column totals. The next section explains the last few steps to finish our example chart.
3.4 Styling the chart
Every smart-element consists of a number of features. In our example, text labels and column segments are the most important features of the column chart. Each kind of feature has a number of specific properties that you can change in order to give it a different look. To change a feature’s properties, you have to select it first. You can also select multiple features at a time to change their properties together.
Selecting features is very similar to selecting files in the Windows Explorer:
- Select a single element by clicking on it with the left mouse button.
- Or select multiple elements by holding down the Ctrl key while clicking.
- You can also select a contiguous range of features by holding down the Shift key, moving the mouse pointer and then clicking with the mouse. Watch how the affected features highlight while you move the mouse with the Shift key held down.
Note: In general, you cannot move or resize features. Features are part of the smart-element and are automatically placed in accordance to the smart-element’s placement. If there are for once multiple possible placements for a feature, you can drag the feature to specify its location.
The following screenshot shows how all column segments of the second data series highlight in orange while they are collectively selected in a Shift-click operation:
When you select features, a floating toolbar containing the corresponding property controls will appear. For the selection of column segments as illustrated above, for example the Fill Color control becomes available in the toolbar:
In our example, we want to change the shading of the second data series, as required by the scribble at ‘Introduction to think-cell’. Therefore, after selecting the column segments of the series, we choose Accent 2 shading:
Note that the labels automatically turn white to make them easier to read on the dark background.
Finally, the numbers in our example chart are still displayed with incorrect precision. According to the scribble, they should be rendered with one decimal place precision. To apply this setting to all numbers of the entire chart, we simply have select the entire smart-element rather than the individual features, and the floating toolbar changes to include the Number Format control:
By typing the decimal place into the number format box, you can specify the desired display format for all numbers in the chart. Alternatively you can click on the arrow and select the desired format from the drop down box. Note that the actual numbers you type or select do not matter, they only act as an example of the required formatting (read more in section ‘Number format’).
The scribble at ‘Introduction to think-cell’ is now represented by a clear, professional looking chart. As you become familiar with using think-cell, you will be able to create a chart like this in less than one minute.
Previous chapter [2 Installation and update] Next chapter [4 Basic concepts]
