How to avoid data inconsistencies on your PowerPoint slides

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Data inconsistencies are the quickest way to lose your audience when you’re sharing a reporting update. In this month’s newsletter, we’ll run you through four ways you can avoid contradictions and ensure your slides tell a consistent data story.

Enjoy the read.

Link data-driven variables in on-slide texts

Say you have a callout box that highlights strong growth in a certain segment. The text might include a finding like: “76% increase in laptop sales in Q2.”

Whenever you have a text related to an on-slide chart or table, look at the text in detail and consider how it might change. In this case, the value of 76% might change, the focus category of laptops might change, and the timeframe of the analysis, Q2, might change.

That’s three variables and three potential errors if you get new data.

But if they’re variables, you can calculate them. If your data’s in Excel, you can use simple formulas to create one cell for the growth rate, one for the highest growth category , and one displaying the latest time period. You can then link cells from your Excel to PowerPoint objects, including chart labels, tables, shapes or text boxes.

Linking any data-driven information to your PowerPoint slide helps you avoid potential errors, even when you update your report next quarter.

Automate visual cues wherever you can

If you’re managing tasks or goals, you might do your nitty-gritty tracking in an Excel workbook, while maintaining a PowerPoint slide as the presentable version you share with stakeholders.

There’s nothing wrong with having two different versions that serve two very different purposes. Where it can go wrong is when there’s a disconnect between the two.

For example, your Excel workbook might use data bars to show goal completion status, but for your PowerPoint slide you want something more visually digestible, so you use Harvey balls.

You wouldn’t dream of manually setting the lengths of the data bars in Excel – they’re based on the completion percentages in the workbook. So why not do the same for your Harvey balls?

Use the completion percentages directly or add a column with a simple formula like =INT($A1*4) if you want a four-segment Harvey ball. Link it to your slide to get visual cues that refresh automatically in PowerPoint whenever you change something in Excel.

Avoid side calculations for chart annotations

Adding additional data to a chart with a CAGR arrow or a value line is a great way to show the key takeaway in an instant. Annotations backed by specific numbers are far more impactful than arrows that just show that a metric increased by some unspecified amount.

The danger of using numbers-backed annotations is they have to be right. If you show sales rising from 70K to 100K and your arrow says it’s a 30% change, that looks like data illiteracy. You won’t get your audience back after that.

But you don’t have to be data illiterate to make a mistake. Human errors slip in easily with rushed side calculations, an annotation left behind when the chart data changes, or a simple typo.

You can avoid all these pitfalls by using a charting tool like thinkcell that automatically generates CAGR arrows, value lines, difference arrows, and other annotations, all of which are inseparable from the chart and its underlying data.

Beware manual use of color that conveys meaning

How often have you seen a slide with a positive number colored red and found yourself asking questions: Is this number meant to be red because an increase is bad? Or is it meant to be green and it hasn’t been updated?

Whenever your audience is distracted by the colors of numbers and arrows, they’re not focusing on the slide’s message.

If you have automatic formatting that changes colors based on your data, that’s fine. If you set colors manually, then it’s dangerous. Just one slip can render the whole slide worse than useless.

With thinkcell, you have options for automating colors using conditional formatting linked to an Excel workbook. You can learn more in our past newsletter on conditional formatting in PowerPoint.

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That’s it for this month’s newsletter. If you want to learn more about data workflows using Excel, PowerPoint and thinkcell slide workbooks, you can read this previous edition Behind the slides.

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