Copying Worksheet Cells From Excel
Copying cells from an Excel worksheet is similar to copying a Word table into PowerPoint. PowerPoint converts the pasted cells into a PowerPoint table, and either places it in a placeholder or as a free-floating object depending on the existing slide content and layout. However, there are some important differences.
The most noticeable difference is the button that appears next to the pasted data after the paste. Rather than an AutoLayout icon, it's a Paste Options button, and it has a different menu with different commands, as shown in Figure 6-24.
Figure 6-24: Paste options after pasting worksheet data from Excel into PowerPoint.
Your paste option choices are the following:
Table: This option converts the Excel data into a PowerPoint table.
Excel Table (entire workbook): This option embeds the entire Excel workbook into the PowerPoint presentation file, which makes the file much larger, but it does retain Excel functionality and access to other cells in the workbook that were not originally selected for the paste.
Picture of Table (smaller file size): This option embeds only the copied Excel cells, and it embeds them in a graphic format that does not allow further editing of the text.
Keep Text Only: This option strips off all the row and column dividers and places all the text into a single text box.
Except for the Excel Table option, none of the preceding options do any linking or embedding. What's that, and why is it significant? Read the next section.