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About this lesson
How to add and customize charts to a Keynote presentation.
Exercise files
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Inserting and Manipulating Charts.key434.6 KB Inserting and Manipulating Charts.key
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Quick reference
Topic
How to add and customize charts to a Keynote presentation.
When to use
Charts can be extremely powerful in telling a story. This lesson will help you to know what options are available and how to adjust your chart to fit your needs.
Instructions
There are three chart types available to choose from:
- 2 dimensional
- 3 dimensional
- interactive
Inserting a new chart is easy in Keynote.
- simply click on the Chart button on the toolbar
- choose the chart style you want to add to the canvas
- this will place that new chart on your canvas
Regrinding the design of new charts:
- the style options for new charts may differ depending on the Keynote theme you chose to create your new file with
- if we change our theme at a later time and we haven’t customized our chart properties, the chart’s style will auto-adjust to the new theme
- we can swipe left and right on the chart picker tool to choose variations of our theme’s styles
To add data to our chart, we:
- highlight the chart
- click the “Edit Chart Data” button at the bottom
- add the desired data
- close the “Edit Chart Data” window
The difference between a 2D chart and a 3D chart is that a 3D chart can be rotated to show different perspectives.
We can adjust chart design elements and properties by:
- selecting the chart
- browsing through the various properties on the formatting pane
There are many different chart styles to choose from on the formatting pane.
We can adjust the thickness of a 3D chart’s series bars by:
- selecting the chart
- adjust the 3D scene on the formatting pane
We can change our chart from a 3D chart to a 2D chart (or 2D to 3D) by:
- selecting the chart
- changing the chart type on the formatting pane
Interactive charts allow us to show data in a fluid motion, with Keynote builds built right into it for presentation time.
Click on the Axis tab on the formatting pane to:
- show/hide the axis name
- adjust our min and max values
- add value labels
- add decimal places
- add a reference line
- adjust major and minor gridlines
- more….
- 00:04 Believe it or not, charts can be incredibly fun.
- 00:07 Okay.
- 00:08 I may be taking my enthusiasm a little too far, but they can be really powerful.
- 00:13 You've heard the phrase a picture is worth a thousand words, right?
- 00:16 Not only does this apply to charts, but it's especially true of charts.
- 00:20 In this lesson we will explore how to create a chart,
- 00:23 as well as how to modify the contents and the look and the feel.
- 00:27 We'll look at two dimensional, three dimensional, and interactive chart types.
- 00:31 So hold on to your hats and let's get started.
- 00:34 Adding a chart to your slide is simple.
- 00:37 We start the process by clicking on the chart button on the toolbar.
- 00:41 This will give us various design options, and chart types to choose from.
- 00:45 As with shapes and other objects,
- 00:46 we can scroll from page to page to find just what we're looking for.
- 00:50 You'll also notice that we can choose from two dimensional styles,
- 00:53 three dimensional styles, or interactive styles.
- 00:56 Let's start by choosing a 2D chart to work with.
- 00:59 Once we have found the design and
- 01:01 style we want to use, we click on that chart to add it to our slide.
- 01:04 Now that we have a chart to work with, let's do something with it.
- 01:09 The first thing we want to do is add valid data points.
- 01:12 So the chart is meaningful to us and our audience.
- 01:15 To do this, all we need to do is click on the edit chart
- 01:18 data button at the bottom of the chart.
- 01:21 This will open a grid of data that we can add to, take away or modify,
- 01:25 depending on our needs.
- 01:27 Once our data has been entered,
- 01:28 we can close this window to commit the changes to the chart.
- 01:32 Before we start talking about design elements, let's remove this chart and
- 01:36 add a new chart, but this time, we will choose a 3D chart.
- 01:41 Apart from the obvious 3D look,
- 01:43 there really is only one thing that differentiates a 3D chart from a 2D chart,
- 01:48 and it's the circle found in the middle of the chart itself.
- 01:51 This circle allows us to rotate the chart to the exact
- 01:54 perspective that we want to display the chart for our audience.
- 01:57 If we want to emphasize the beginning of a trend for
- 02:00 example, we may want to bring the left side of the chart to the foreground.
- 02:04 Conversely, if we want to emphasize the end of a trend we would do the opposite.
- 02:09 As you can see, the motion of rotating the chart is as fluid as you would expect.
- 02:13 Also, notice the shadows and reflective properties of the chart as we rotate it.
- 02:17 Apple really pays a lot of attention to the details of their products and
- 02:21 this is no exception.
- 02:23 Now that we have created our chart, added our data, and
- 02:26 rotated our 3D chart to the appropriate perspective,
- 02:29 let's talk about visual changes that we can make to our chart.
- 02:33 When the chart is selected, you will notice that the formatting pane has
- 02:36 adjusted its properties to reflect chart-specific attributes.
- 02:40 From here, we can adjust the chart style or colors.
- 02:45 This would be a great time to look at all of the options that are available to see
- 02:48 what best fits your needs.
- 02:50 If you don't find something you like, don't stress about it.
- 02:53 I'll show you a way to customize those colors in just a minute.
- 02:57 We can also choose whether we show the chart title in legend, and
- 03:00 change the font styles.
- 03:03 In the section below we start to get into some really interesting attributes.
- 03:07 In this section we can control the 3D scene, the chart depth, lighting style,
- 03:12 and bar shape.
- 03:14 Let's take a few seconds to explore some of these options.
- 03:18 In the Gaps section we can adjust the amount of space between bars,
- 03:21 as well as between sets.
- 03:23 As you can see, we can be very granular in these values,
- 03:26 allowing us to be very precise in our design.
- 03:29 In the next section, we can adjust our shadow values.
- 03:33 If you started with a two dimensional chart and wanted to change it to a three
- 03:36 dimensional chart, this section will allow you to do that.
- 03:40 We can also change it to a third chart type, which is interactive.
- 03:44 While we're here, let's explore that chart type.
- 03:48 Interactive charts are amazing for telling a story using motion.
- 03:52 Rather than showing the static with a trend line, we can use that same data to
- 03:56 build an animated chart that grows, or shrinks over time, like in this example.
- 04:02 This type of motion can be extremely powerful to your audience
- 04:05 When you use an interactive chart, it has an animation build built right into it.
- 04:10 When it comes time to present to your audience, we simply hit the advance key
- 04:14 one time, and it will automatically build the chart for
- 04:17 us using the data that we have supplied it.
- 04:20 Let's move away from chart types and
- 04:21 continue our discussion our discussion on modifying chart properties.
- 04:24 If we click on the axis tab in the formating pane, we will expose options for
- 04:29 changing attributes related to the axis of the chart.
- 04:32 Using this check box, we can choose to display or hide the axis name.
- 04:37 In the axis scale section, we can adjust our minimum and maximum values,
- 04:41 as well as the number of steps it takes to get from min to max.
- 04:45 For example, if we changed our minimum value to zero and
- 04:48 our maximum value to 150 and we changed the number of steps to three
- 04:53 we would see the values 50, 100, and 150 along our y axis.
- 04:58 If we wanted more detail we would simply increase the number of steps that it takes
- 05:02 to go from min to max.
- 05:04 As you can see this also adjusts the number of grid lines which we see on our
- 05:07 chart which can make it easier to read the values on the chart.
- 05:11 We can use the value label section to add our label to our axis values.
- 05:15 For example, if we were showing data in US dollars
- 05:19 we could use the currency option that will insert a dollar sign.
- 05:23 Depending on the type of value that we choose from,
- 05:25 we may have other parameters to adjust as well.
- 05:28 If we need to add a prefix or a suffix to our axis values, we can set that here.
- 05:33 For example, if we were showing a chart for
- 05:35 dollar amounts in the millions, we may opt to keep our numerical values simple, but
- 05:40 add the letter M as a suffix character to denote that the values are in millions.
- 05:45 There are a few other options you may want to explore below.
- 05:48 In this section we've been exploring how to modify the Y axis.
- 05:52 Similar attributes are available for
- 05:53 modifying the X axis by choosing this tab here.
- 05:57 There are a few other options that are available under the series, and
- 06:00 arrange tabs, but we won't go through those in this lesson.
- 06:03 In this lesson, we've walked through how to create a chart,
- 06:06 how to switch between chart types, how to change chart colors, gap settings,
- 06:11 scene attributes, axis scales, and axis values.
- 06:15 Hopefully at this point, you're anxious to start creating your own charts.
- 06:18 So we'll stop the lesson now, and let you get busy exploring.
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