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Insert a live Excel spreadsheet onto a slide

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You can insert a live Excel spreadsheet onto a slide so that you can use Excel while in Slide Show view.

There are other ways to get Excel data onto a slide, so why would you want an active Excel spreadsheet? Let’s say that you’re presenting some results of your financial analysis and your boss asks, “How did you get those results? Show me the spreadsheet.” You could switch to Excel, but it might be more slick to have it available in your PowerPoint presentation.

Slick? What does that mean? It just means that the process is less disruptive and more continuous, so it looks more professional. Try out this unusual technique and see if you like it.

Here are the steps:

  1. Choose Insert (tab)> Object> From File. In the Insert Object dialog box, choose the Create from File option.
  2. Click Browse, navigate to the Excel file, and double-click it. Click OK. You now see the spreadsheet on your slide. You may see all of it or part of it, but when you show it in Slide Show view, you’ll be able to pan and zoom to display what you want.
  3. In PowerPoint 2003, choose Slide Show> Custom Animation. In 2007 and 2010, go to the Animations tab. In 2007, click Custom Animation.
  4. With the spreadsheet selected, choose Add Effect in 2003 and 2007. Choose Add Animation in 2010. From the categories choose Object Actions or OLE Action Verbs. Then choose Edit or Open; it doesn’t seem to make any difference. Leave the default On Click setting, so that the animation happens when you click.
  5. When you go into slide show view, you’ll see the same thing you saw when you inserted the spreadsheet. Now click and the Excel spreadsheet will open. Depending on your version, the spreadsheet may be in front of your slide or you may simply switch to Excel. In either case, you can now do anything that you can do in Excel, including edit the data and use Excel’s tools.

What you’re seeing is a temporary view of your spreadsheet inside PowerPoint. See the highlighted text: “Worksheet in PowerPoint Slide Show.”

To go back to your slide show, just close the spreadsheet, using the X button.

Thanks to Echo Swinford for her expertise.

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Comments

  1. Excellent tip, thank you! I occasionally must insert Excel sheets into PPT slides and have been doing so using a more primitive way. This is a much better alternative.

  4. Do you know if you can use one spreasheet for all your slides or if you need to have one spreadsheet for each slide?
    Thanks

  5. You can only insert a spreadsheet on one slide at a time. I guess you could insert it on each slide, but why would you do that? In other words, why go to a different slide to discuss the same spreadsheet?

  6. It would be very useful to have one spreadsheet for all the slides of a ppt so if you wish to modify the data you can be assured that the change will be consistent across the presentation.

  7. Hi

    Thank you for this. Really helpful.

    Following the instructions, I was able to click and open a PDF file in Slide show mode. But, I had to use alt-tab to move to the open PDF. Is there a way to make it open and get displayed as the active window?

    Thank you so much! 🙂

  9. The inserted icon of Excel Spreadsheet can’t open in Slide Show, but in PPT slides can. How can I open in Slide Show?

  10. Hi,

    I’m copying an excel file into a powerpoint presentation and the tables are now linked to the excel.

    The problem is that the fonts on the poworpoint are more condensed and not easy to be read. The original excel doesn’t have such a problem.

    What can I do to solve this problem?

    Thank you

    Luca

  14. I have inserted the worksheet in my ppt but the data inserted does not get updated in the original sheet. And I also cannot use the edited worksheet from the first slide in the further slides. Is there a way to do that?

  15. Many thanks for this tip. It’s brilliant (once I had realised that in my version of PowerPoint 2007 it’s got nothing to do with “Slide Show” or “Custom Animation” – the final “Object Actions” step is implemented from the “Action” command that is in the “Links” section of the “Insert” menu bar). I found that, in the last step of your sequence of steps, an alternative way of linking the slide to the live spreadsheet is to insert a hyperlink from the slide to the spreadsheet. This has an advantage in certain circumstances(see below). To do this use the “Hyperlink” option (in PP2007 it’s next to “Action” in the “Links” part of the “Insert” menu bar) – select the spreadsheet in the slide, click on “Hyperlink”, choose “Link to Existing File or Web Page” and browse to your spreadsheet. What is the advantage? Simply that you can subsequently edit the hyperlink. This is vital if, as in my case, you subsequently copy the both PP and spreadsheet files onto another laptop and run the presentation from it, in the event that the spreadsheet file is now located in a different place than on your original computer (e.g. temporarily on the desktop instead of in a designated folder). By the way, you can insert a hyperlink to the spreadsheet alternatively using the “Action” command, but I found that if I did it this way then I couldn’t edit the hyperlink subsequently.

  16. I used the NOW() function in the spreadsheet I embedded into the powerpoint. The powerpoint runs in a loop to display information to my group. The function is not updating automatically when the days change. Is there a way to have the spreadsheet update on every pass through the ppt show?

  19. I got this, but the spreadsheet is not active once I move from normal view to slide show. I cant open the spreadsheet to update data in powerpoint in d slideshow view. Any tips?

  20. Is there any way to have it auto-update, so I can change the data and not need exit and re-run the ppt?

  22. Hi. I have a problem in powerpoint : I want to insert an excel file to one slide so when I open the slide , powerpoint open the excel sheet . in other word I want to hyperlink an excel file/extracted sheet in a powerpoint slide . please help me. thanks

  24. How do you link a large excel spreadsheet into multiple powerpoint slides? The excel document I am trying to link has hundreds of rows, so it won’t all fit on one powerpoint slide… any suggestions?

  25. This works perfect; however, I’m using 2013 and the Excel opens favoring the bottom of slide…it doesn’t open in the center. Any work around?

  26. I have inserted the worksheet in my ppt but the data inserted does not get updated in the original sheet. And I also cannot use the edited worksheet from the first slide in the further slides. Is there a way to do that?

  27. If we have more than one sheet in an excel file and we want all the sheets to get inserted into powerpoint, ofcourse in different slides, how can we do so??

  28. Or…use EzPaste (www.excel-premiumutilities.com) for completely automating the transfer from Excel to PowerPoint (hundreds of charts and tables in one click)

  30. Hi Ellen,

    Thank you very much. I use this technique often. One recurring problem I have (more of an annoyance than a problem). My worksheet almost always (not always) comes in occupying about half of the available screen. I want it to open in full screen mode. My original is full screen. I have made sure that it is saved in full screen. The spreadsheet is displayed t the correct size but it is not fully visible because the window is not full screen. Any help would be appreciated ad would make a really great tool into an indispensable tool.

  32. You can also fine tune the opening of spreadsheet or else in Powerpoint 2016 by option TRIGGER->ON CLICK->specific OBJECT which means that during presentation after pointing the inserted file the cursor changes to hand so you can return to or reopen any file in the slide show.

  34. Just tried exactly that, but can’t get it to work, which is how I stumbled on this thread. I am using Office for Mac 2016 and struggle finding “Object Actions”. Any help appreciated!

  35. I have created a interactive excel where a picture is in the background and items in the picture are identified by using the comments. It works great but now I want to insert this interactive excel on a slide in PPT. I can get the picture to insert and the excel document but the comments will not move and work. Is there a way to do this?

  37. First of all I am a computer teacher. When teaching my students how to use comments in Excel we made a interactive map. We placed a map in the background of excel of a state. Then we grouped several cells around major cities. To teach them how to use comments I had them research those cities quickly and locate a tourist attraction. They typed the name and placed a picture of the attraction in the comment box. Now we are on PowerPoint and are getting ready for our final which is creating everything needed for a travel agency grand opening, putting it on a powerpoint and presenting it. I would like for the to create the same excel project for one of their states and put it on powerpoint also.

  38. HI – Is there any way to embed an excel sheet in a PPP which is the summary of a larger data sheet, in a way that clicking that summary will bring up the full excel sheet it’s been cut from?
    And if this is not complicated enough, here’s the real question – is there a way to embed the excel sheet that when I send the whole presentation to someone else I won’t have to send the excel sheet as a separate file?
    Creating a hyperlink doesn’t not work because once the presentation is sent out of the original PC it was creating on, the hyperlink path is no longer correct….

  40. Hi- I have been able to link my excel spreadsheets to my powerpoint. However, I am having an issue with saving. Each month, I want to save the prior months data, and then do a save as for the new month and have the new (saved as “new month” excel and powerpoint be reflective of the new month and not be linked to the original (previous) excel file, which mine is currently doing. How can I accomplish this?

  41. Sara, can you do it the other way around? In other words, do a Save As but then go back to the original spreadsheet and update that one. In that way, the updated spreadsheet always has the same file name and location. Think of your Save As as a way of archiving old spreadsheets instead of creating updated ones.

  42. Dear all
    when i hyperlink presentation to excel spreadsheet. but i found that only one sheet linked in this file and i want to hyperlink one slide to many more sheets. Please help me.

  43. Hi Ellen,
    I’m trying to take multiple data spreadsheets in a multi-sheet excel file (each sheet has a different spreadsheet on it) and put it into my powerpoint presentation. However, I want each spreadsheet to reflect the changes I make in excel file on the powerpoint. Hyperlinking hasn’t worked for me because there are multiple spreadsheets in the excel file. I tried to rename the data I wanted to use by using the ‘Define Name’ function then go about inserting it into my powerpoint that way, but it isn’t working. Is there an alternative method?

    Thanks!

  47. Hello,

    I was wondering if by using excel live in my presentation, when i edit some numbers in it, will it automatically update the charts in PowerPoint as well? (charts are linked to the excel file too)

  48. Yes, you’ll be viewing an Excel spreadsheet, so whatever is on the Excel spreadsheet, you’ll see. But there are other ways to update data in PowerPoint. These might help:
    http://www.ellenfinkelstein.com/pptblog/link-text-to-an-excel-cell-dynamically-update-data/
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSHUT4L5vI0&feature=youtu.be
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c38jOo399Wk&feature=youtu.be
    http://www.ellenfinkelstein.com/pptblog/how-to-create-a-chart-graph-in-powerpoint-from-excel-data-part-iii/

    Ellen

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