Presentation quality Excel tables?

  • Thread starter Thread starter LunaMoon
  • Start date Start date
L

LunaMoon

HI all,

After collecting many data, I want to summarize data into a table and
then put into both powerpoint and Word document for presentation and
report use.

Could anybody show me how to design a Excel table that really looks
great? Any templates? I designed a bunch of tables myself and because
I am lacking of artistic senses, my tables look ugly...

One requirement is that I have to make this data table in Black/White,
because in the report, mostly people print it out in Black/White, the
color will get distorted if it document is in color mode. To save
overall time, why don't I just design the whole table in Black/White
and reuse the tables both in report and presentation? Unless there is
a way to easily convert colorful presentation mode table into a Black/
White report mode table?

Anyway, I really want to make my data tables visually appealing and a
lot of tables are comparing data and results... want to make sure my
audience and my boss gasp at my work. But also to save time, I have to
start the table in Excel, right?

Please help! Thanks a lot!
 
I believe you have the wrong forum. Maybe Publisher or Templates group would
be more appropriate.
 
Excel 2007 easily allows you to create presentation quality tables that will
make your boss gasp.

Not so easy in pre-2007 the quality of the graphics are not that great,
although it can be done, alternatively you might want to find a secondary app
to beef them up.
Excel autoformat i find poor.


I have a standard set of simple but very neat table format i use, dark blue
cell background and white text for headings, font is tahoma, cell text colour
dark blue, dotted grey interior borders, dark blue table border, rightbelow
drop shadow.
Also in excel i hide all the grid lines by making the worksheet cell colour
white, looks more cleaner.
No changes are necessary for BW printing as blue translates to black.

Post back if you need more help.
--

_______________________
Naz,
London
nazim1421ataoldotcom
 
Dear Naz,

Could you please send me the templates?

I have both 2007 and 2003.

Again, I'd like to hear your comments.

To make it both for presentation and report, I have chosen to do it
Black/White, because most of my readers print in Black/White...

So I am primarily looking for neat layouts/styles/templates in B/W...

Any more thoughts?

Thanks!
 
Hi Naz,

I've got your files. They look great! In order to use them, I have the
following questions:

1. My boss only uses 2003, and I have the 2007. The 2007 looks much
nicer, and I want to do the 2007 and insert to my powerpoint for
better visual looks. How to manage two copies 2003 and 2007 at the
same time with minimal wasted efforts? Is there a way to maintain it
in 2003 and when I need it for powerpoint I manipulate it in 2007?

2. What's the best way to copy&paste the table into powerpoint? I have
tried copy and paste into Powerpoint directly and they look ugly and
the width and heights of the cells are distorted. I have also tried to
copy and paste to Paint.exe first and use Paint as an intermediary,
the result also looks ugly.

3. You mentioned about applying a formatter, to change the format and
style of tables easily, how to do that? I ask this because I want to
potentially do color mode in presentation and easily switch to B/W
mode in print...

Thanks a lot for your help!
 
JLGWhiz said:
I believe you have the wrong forum.  Maybe Publisher or Templates group
would be more appropriate.
Click to expand...
...

So true. The 99.9% of humans for whom 'presentation quality tables'
isn't a BS red flag can't comprehend tables of more than 4 columns or
6 rows. For the 0.1% who can comprehend bigger tables, formatting is
an almost certain indicator that the 'data' requires BS filtering.

Depressing that presentation of these tables seems to be more
important than summarizing the presumed information from them. As I
just learned in a 'Communicating with Dummies' training, most
effective to present conclusions first, then present argument/
derivation/proof, and finally provide data as an appendix because
decision makers only really care about the conclusions.

People who understand what they're doing don't care about formatting.
The converse also holds, and is perhaps more revealing.
 
Edit / Paste Special / Device Independent Bitmap or Picture. This will give
an image only, but will look just like it did on your screen.

Regards
Ken.......................


Hi Naz,

I've got your files. They look great! In order to use them, I have the
following questions:

1. My boss only uses 2003, and I have the 2007. The 2007 looks much
nicer, and I want to do the 2007 and insert to my powerpoint for
better visual looks. How to manage two copies 2003 and 2007 at the
same time with minimal wasted efforts? Is there a way to maintain it
in 2003 and when I need it for powerpoint I manipulate it in 2007?

2. What's the best way to copy&paste the table into powerpoint? I have
tried copy and paste into Powerpoint directly and they look ugly and
the width and heights of the cells are distorted. I have also tried to
copy and paste to Paint.exe first and use Paint as an intermediary,
the result also looks ugly.

3. You mentioned about applying a formatter, to change the format and
style of tables easily, how to do that? I ask this because I want to
potentially do color mode in presentation and easily switch to B/W
mode in print...

Thanks a lot for your help!
 
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