manualThink-cell chart 5.3.pdf

7/16/2019 manualThink-cell chart 5.3.pdf

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/manualthink-cell-chart-53pdf 1/121

think-cell 5.3User Guide



Imprint

think-cell Sales GmbH & Co. KGChausseestraße 8/E 845 Third Avenue, 6th Floor [email protected] Berlin New York, NY 10022 http://www.think-cell.comGermany United States of America

Tel.: +49 30 666473-10 Tel.: +1 800 891 8091Fax: +49 30 666473-19 Fax: +1 212 504 3039

November 26, 2012

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned,specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilmor in other ways, and storage on data banks. Duplication of this publication or parts thereof is permitted only under theprovisions of German Copyright Law of September 9, 1965, in its current version, and permission for use must alwaysbe obtained from think-cell Software GmbH. Violations are liable for prosecution act under German Copyright Law.

©2002–2012 think-cell Software GmbH

think-cell is a registered trademark. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, etc. in thispublication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevantprotective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.

http://www.think-cell.com/

mailto:[email protected]



Contents

Imprint . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

1. Product overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

2. Installation and update . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

System requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

First installation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

Automatic update . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

Trouble shooting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

Online quality assurance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

Temporarily disabling think-cell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

3. Introduction to think-cell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

Inserting a new chart . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

Adding and removing labels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

Entering chart data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

Styling the chart . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

4. Basic concepts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

Toolbar and Elements menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20



Contents 4

Rotating and flipping charts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

Resizing smart-elements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

Selecting charts and features . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

Formatting and style . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

5. Data entry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

Internal data sheet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

Absolute and relative values . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

Transposing the data sheet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

Reverse order in data sheet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

6. Text labels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30

Types of labels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30

Automatic label placement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

Manual label placement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

Text fields . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

Text label property controls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

Pasting text into multiple labels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35

7. Column chart, line chart and area chart . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36

Column chart and stacked column chart . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36

Clustered chart . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36100% chart . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

Line chart . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

Area chart . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39

Combination chart . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40

Scales and axes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40



Contents 5

Arrows and values . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45

Legend . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50

8. Waterfall chart . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51

9. Mekko chart . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54

Mekko chart with %-axis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54

Mekko chart with units . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55

Ridge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55

10. Pie chart . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56

11. Scatter and bubble charts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57

Labels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58

Scatter chart . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58

Bubble chart . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59Trendline and partition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59

12. Project timeline (Gantt chart) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61

Calendar scale . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61

Rows (Activities) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64

Timeline items . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67

Date format control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71Language dependency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71

Date format codes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72

13. Customizing think-cell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73

Creating a think-cell style . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73



Contents 6

Loading style files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73

Deploying think-cell styles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74

Style file format . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74

style . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74

fillLst . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74

noFill . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75

solidFill . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75

separator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75schemeClr . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75

srgbClr . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75

sdrgbClr . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75

scrgbClr . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76

prstClr . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76

fillSchemeLst . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76

fillScheme . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76

fillRef . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76

fillSchemeRefDefault . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77

fillSchemeRefDefaultStacked . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77

fillSchemeRefDefaultWaterfall . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77

fillSchemeRefDefaultClustered . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77

fillSchemeRefDefaultMekko . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77fillSchemeRefDefaultArea . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77

fillSchemeRefDefaultPie . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77

fillSchemeRefDefaultBubble . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78

noStyle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78

Style file tutorials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78



Contents 7

14. Excel data links. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80

Creating a chart from Excel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80

Transposing linked data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81

Updating a linked chart . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82

Data Links dialog . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83

Maintaining data links . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84

How to compile the data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86

Frequently asked questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87

15. More tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91

Special characters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91

Save and send selected slides . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91

Changing the language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92

Changing fonts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92

Automatic case code . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92think-cell round . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93

Appendix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99

A. Deployment guide . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100

Workstation prerequisites . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100

Initial installation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100

Updates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106

Notification about license key expiration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107

Starting PowerPoint with think-cell enabled or disabled . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107

Online quality assurance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108



Contents 8

B. Exchanging files with PowerPoint . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111

Loading files from think-cell in PowerPoint . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111

Reimporting smart-elements from PowerPoint . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111

C. Programming think-cell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113

UpdateChart . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113

PresentationFromTemplate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114

D. Keyboard shortcuts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116

Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117



1. Product overview

Welcome to think-cell 5.3! This software is an add-infor Microsoft PowerPoint that is specifically designed tomake the creation of business charts as fast as scribblingon paper. Charts created with think-cell intelligently ar-range themselves to look just right. All the chart decora-tions – connectors, arrows, and alike – are just a mouseclick away and are automatically placed precisely wherethey belong. The look of all drawings is optimized to ful-fill the requirements of a clean and professional slidedesign.



2. Installation and update

This chapter guides you through the installation of your personal copy of think-cell. If you are about to preparethe deployment of think-cell in a larger organization, youshould skip this chapter and read the Deployment guideon page 100.

System requirements

To install and run think-cell, the following software mustbe installed:

– Microsoft Windows 2000, XP, Vista, 7 or 8.

– Microsoft Office XP, 2003, 2007 or 2010 with at leastPowerPoint and Excel installed

The installation of think-cell requires about 55 MB of disk space.

First installationInstalling think-cell

Please close all instances of Microsoft PowerPoint andMicrosoft Excel before installing think-cell.

The installation can be started directly from the onlinesource. When you download the setup file you maychoose the following:

– Open in order to install the software directly from theinternet.

– Save to Disk and start the installation by double-clicking the downloaded setup file.

The installation wizard asks for the installation path, thencopies the required files and updates the registry. Thedefault installation path is:

C:\Program Files\think-cell

If the installation wizard detects that you do not have suf-ficient privileges for a regular installation, a single-user installation will be performed. This means that think-cellcan only be used with your current Windows login name.The default installation path for a single-user installationis:

C:\Documents and Settings\[user]\

Local Settings\Application Data\think-cell

or, for Windows Vista, 7 and 8:

C:\Users\[user]\AppData\Local\think-cell



Installation and update 11

Missing system components

When you start PowerPoint for the first time after in-stalling think-cell, the software checks for the availabilityof all required system components. On most computers,the required components are already installed.

If think-cell detects that a required system component ismissing, a dialog box opens with either a link to Micro-soft’s download web page for the respective componentor an explanation how to install the missing component

using Microsoft Office Setup. You need to restart Power-Point for the installation to take effect.

Components required by think-cell are:

Visual Basic for Applications component In MicrosoftOffice Setup, choose Add or Remove Features andselect it under Office Shared Features.

Microsoft Graph In Microsoft Office Setup, choose Add

or Remove Features, then under Office Tools, selectGraph.

Microsoft XML Parser (MSXML) 3.0 This is included inWindows XP or later and in Internet Explorer 6.0or later.

Macro security warnings

The think-cell add-in requires the file tcaddin.dll to be

loaded by PowerPoint and Excel. Depending on the se-curity settings of your computer, you may be promptedwith the following security warning when starting one of these products after installing think-cell.

You can examine the file’s certificate by clicking on De-

tails. Make sure the certificate belongs to think-cell Soft-ware GmbH, Berlin, Germany. We recommend that youcheck the box Always trust macros from this source andthen click Enable Macros.

– If you do not check Always trust macros from this source,

the security dialog will continue to show up whenever you start PowerPoint or Excel.

– If the security on your computer is set to High, you mustcheck the box before you can click Enable Macros.

– If you choose Disable Macros, you will not be ableto use think-cell. To enable macros, close PowerPointor Excel and open it again; you will then again beprompted with the security dialog.

Entering the license key

The public version of think-cell requires a valid licensekey, which expires after a fixed period of time. When youstart PowerPoint with a think-cell trial version for the firsttime, or when your license key has expired, you need toenter a valid license key.




Please contact us to receive such a license key for the first

time or as a prolongation of your existing deployment.In any case, you can always click the Cancel button andcontinue using PowerPoint without think-cell. To enter thelicense key later, click the Activate think-cell button inthe think-cell toolbar or ribbon group.

Automatic update

think-cell regularly checks online to see if a new release

is available, and if so, attempts to download the updatedinstallation file. The automatic download is subject tothe following conditions:

– The check for a new release is performed once whenPowerPoint is started with think-cell installed and en-abled.

– The automatic download runs quietly in the back-ground and only occupies unused bandwidth. If the

internet connection is interrupted or there is other net-work traffic, the download is paused until the networkis again available.

– While PowerPoint is in on-screen presentation mode,any automatic update activities are suppressed.

A dialog box appears after the download is completed,indicating that a new release of think-cell is available

for installation. You have the option to either immedi-

ately Install the update, or click Later to postpone theinstallation until the next start of PowerPoint.

Security note: All files that are executed and installed bythe automatic update are digitally signed by think-cell.The signature is checked for validity before any codeis executed or installed. For additional security, the au-tomatic download uses an SSL-encrypted connection.If you have further questions on security issues, pleasecontact your local administrator.

Trouble shooting

For latest information on known issues andworkarounds, please refer to our website at:

http://www.think-cell.com/kb

If you cannot find a solution in the knowledge baseor this manual, feel free to contact our support team.Open the More menu in the think-cell tool bar and click

on Request Support... Choose from the opening windowwhether you would like to attach certain slides to an e-mail to think-cell’s support team. This is often useful topoint up a problem. After confirming with OK your e-mail application will open with an e-mail template.

http://www.think-cell.com/kb




Online quality assurance

At think-cell we are committed to stability and robustnessas key factors for the professional use of our software. If desired by your organization’s IT department, think-celloffers automatic error reporting. When an error condi-tion arises while you are using think-cell, the softwareautomatically generates a report that helps us to under-stand the problem and fix it in the next release. The error report only contains information about the internal state

of our software. No user data is included in the error report.

The software sends the error report encrypted. You mightnotice a short delay while an error report is being sent,but in most cases you can continue using think-cell asusual.

If automatic error reporting is disabled for your organi-zation’s version of think-cell, it can be temporarily en-

abled until the end of the current PowerPoint sessionby typing senderrorshome into any textbox within Power-Point. Our support staff may ask you to do so if someproblem cannot be reproduced in our laboratory. A message box confirms that automatic error reporting isnow enabled.

For more information on think-cell’s automated error reporting, refer to section Online quality assurance onpage 108.

Temporarily disabling think-cell

To quickly work around compatibility problems, or other issues arising from the use of think-cell, you have the op-tion to temporarily disable think-cell without uninstallingthe software.

In the More menu in the think-cell toolbar in PowerPoint,there is an option called Deactivate think-cell. When youselect this option, think-cell will be disabled immediately.With think-cell disabled, charts are presented as nor-mal PowerPoint shapes. To re-enable think-cell, click the

Activate think-cell button in the think-cell toolbar or ribbon group in PowerPoint. There is no need to closethe PowerPoint application in order to switch betweenthink-cell and plain PowerPoint.

Before you alter smart-elements without think-cell,be aware of potential compatibility issues (chapter Exchanging files with PowerPoint on page 111).

Note: You do not need to disable think-cell in order to make your presentations accessible to coworkers or clients who may not have think-cell installed. Simplysend them the same file you are working with – if think-cell is not installed, they will find a presentation with nor-mal PowerPoint shapes.



3. Introduction to think-cell

In this chapter, a step-by-step tutorial will show you howto create a chart from a scribble like this:

A more elaborate presentation of the basic concepts of think-cell and details on the various chart types can befound in chapter Basic concepts on page 20 and thefollowing chapters.

Inserting a new chart

With think-cell installed, you will find the following tool-

bar in PowerPoint:

In PowerPoint 2007 and later the toolbars have been re-placed by the Ribbon. The think-cell group can be foundin the Insert tab.



Introduction to think-cell 15

Note: In the following, we will use the term think-celltoolbar to refer to the think-cell toolbar in Office XP and2003 and the think-cell ribbon group in Office 2007and later.

The think-cell toolbar offers a number of drawing ob-jects with extended functionality and built-in intelligence.These objects are called smart-elements, as opposed to

ordinary PowerPoint objects (sometimes also referred toas AutoShapes).

Inserting a smart-element into your presentation is verysimilar to inserting a PowerPoint shape. To create a newsmart-element on a slide, go to the think-cell toolbar andclick the Elements button in PowerPoint 2007 and later or the think-cell button in earlier versions of PowerPoint.Then, select the required chart type.

Note: In the following, we will use the term Elementsbutton to refer to the button Elements in PowerPoint 2007or later, the button Charts in Excel 2007 or later and thebutton think-cell in Office XP and 2003.

You may notice small arrow markers around some of the chart types. Moving the mouse over these markerslets you select rotated and flipped versions of these charttypes.

In our example, we want to insert a column chart, whichis represented by this button:

If you unintendedly have selected some smart-element,you can always do the following:

– Press the£

¢

¡Esc key to cancel the insert operation.

– Re-click the Elements button to select a different smart-

element.

Once you have chosen a smart-element, a rectangle willappear with the mouse pointer, indicating where the el-ement will be inserted on the slide. You have two optionswhen placing the smart-element on the slide:

– Click the left mouse button once to place the elementwith the default width and height.

– Hold down the left mouse button and drag themouse to create a custom-sized element. Somesmart-elements have a fixed width for insertion; inthis case, you can only alter the height. You canalways change the size of the smart-element later.

When you are inserting or resizing a smart-element, youwill notice that it snaps to certain locations.




The snapping behavior serves the following purposes:

– With snapping, objects can be quickly and easilyaligned. The highlighting of a border of some other object on the slide indicates that the smart-elementyou are moving is currently aligned with that object.

– When resizing a smart-element, it snaps to its pre-ferred size. In the case of a column chart, its preferredwidth depends on the number of columns. If you havemanually changed the size of the chart, you can easilychange it back to the default width: It will snap whenyou come close enough.

As in PowerPoint, you can hold down the£

¢

¡ Alt key to move

the mouse freely without snapping.

The smart-element is automatically selected after inser-tion, as indicated by a blue highlighted outline. If the

smart-element you want to modify is not selected, you

can select it by clicking on it. Although the highlight-ing of selected smart-elements looks different, selectingsmart-elements works the same way as selecting ordi-nary PowerPoint shapes.

Adding and removing labels

After inserting a new column chart, both category la-bels and series labels are shown automatically. There

are several ways to remove and add labels. The easi-est way to remove a single label is to select it and pressthe

£

¢

¡Delete key. The easiest way to remove all labels of a

particular type is to select the respective button from thechart’s context menu.

To remove the series label like in our example col-umn chart, click Remove Series Label in the smart-

element’s context menu. To access the context menu of

a smart-element, move the mouse to a point within thesmart-element’s rectangle where there are no other ob-jects and click the right mouse button. Read more aboutediting text labels in chapter Text labels on page 30.




Entering chart data

When you select the column chart, a data sheet buttonOpen Datasheet is displayed in the bottom right cor-

ner of the chart.

Click the data sheet button, or simply double-click thechart, to open the data sheet. The data sheet opens au-tomatically after insertion of a new chart. Now, enter thedata from our example column chart into the data sheet.Type in only the actual numbers. Do not round numbers

or calculate totals: think-cell will do this for you. For mostchart types, you can simply input the numbers the wayyou see them in the scribble, from left to right and fromtop to bottom. The tab key

£

¢

¡ can be used, just as in

Microsoft Excel, to conveniently move to the next col-umn in a row, and the enter key

£

¢

¡

can be used to jump

to the first column of the next row.

The data sheet for our example column chart looks likethis:

Note that the chart on the slide instantly updates to re-flect the changes in the data sheet. It even grows andshrinks depending on the area of the data sheet that youuse. Years are automatically inserted as category labelsin the first row of the data sheet. The sequence of yearsis automatically continued when you start entering datain the following column.

Having entered the data, our example chart looks like

this:

As you can see, think-cell has already performed a gooddeal of work to make the chart look “right”. In particular,it automatically placed all labels and added column to-tals. The next section explains the last few steps to finishour example chart.

Styling the chartEvery smart-element consists of a number of features. Inour example, text labels and column segments are themost important features of the column chart. Each kindof feature has a number of specific properties that youcan change in order to give it a different look. To changea feature’s properties, you have to select it first. You canalso select multiple features at a time to change their

properties together.Selecting features is very similar to selecting files in theWindows Explorer:

– Select a single element by clicking on it with the leftmouse button.

– Or select multiple elements by holding down the£

¢

¡Ctrl

key while clicking.




– You can also select a contiguous range of features

by holding down the£

¢

¡Shift ⇑ key, moving the mousepointer and then clicking with the mouse. Watch howthe affected features highlight while you move themouse with the

£

¢

¡Shift ⇑ key held down.

Note: In general, you cannot move or resize features.Features are part of the smart-element and are auto-matically placed in accordance to the smart-element’splacement. If there are for once multiple possible place-

ments for a feature, you can drag the feature to specifyits location.

The following screenshot shows how all column seg-ments of the second data series highlight in orange whilethey are collectively selected in a

£

¢

¡Shift ⇑-click operation:

When you select features, a floating toolbar containingthe corresponding property controls will appear. For the

selection of column segments as illustrated above, for example the Fill Color control becomes available in thetoolbar:

In our example, we want to change the shading of thesecond data series, as required by the scribble on page

14. Therefore, after selecting the column segments of

the series, we choose Accent 2 shading:

Note that the labels automatically turn white to makethem easier to read on the dark background.

Finally, the numbers in our example chart are still dis-played with incorrect precision. According to the scrib-ble, they should be rendered with one decimal placeprecision. To apply this setting to all numbers of the en-

tire chart, we simply have select the entire smart-elementrather than the individual features, and the floating tool-bar changes to include the Number Format control:

By typing the decimal place into the number format box,you can specify the desired display format for all num-bers in the chart. Alternatively you can click on the ar-row and select the desired format from the drop down

box. Note that the actual numbers you type or selectdo not matter, they only act as an example of the re-quired formatting (read more in section Number formaton page 33).




The scribble on page 14 is now represented by a clear,professional looking chart. As you become familiar withusing think-cell, you will be able to create a chart likethis in less than one minute.



4. Basic concepts

This chapter presents the basic concepts of working withthink-cell. They apply to all chart types. For a quick tour refer to chapter Introduction to think-cell on page 14.

Toolbar and Elements menu

After installing think-cell you will find the following tool-bar in Office 2003 (or below):

In the ribbon of Office 2007 (and later) the think-cellgroup can be found in the Insert tab.

As you see toolbar and ribbon group are similar. Onlythe placement differs. In the following, we will refer toboth styles by the term think-cell toolbar . Using the think-cell toolbar you can call most of think-cell’s functions.

After clicking on Elements, the four symbols in the first

row represent basic shapes which can be used in your presentation as described in Checkbox and Harvey ballon page 66.

We call the chart objects in the other rows smart-elements due to their enhanced functionality. When youmove your mouse pointer over one of the small arrowsbeside the symbols, you may notice the symbol turning.That way the smart-element can be turned in the desired

direction. By clicking on them, smart elements can beinserted like normal PowerPoint shapes.

The following smart-elements are available:



Basic concepts 21

Icon Known as Page

column or bar chart 36

100% column or bar chart 37

clustered column or bar chart 36

build-up waterfall chart 51

build-down waterfall chart 51

Mekko chart with units 54Mekko chart with %-axis 54

area chart 39

area chart with %-axis 39

line chart 37

combination chart 40

pie chart 56scatter chart 58

bubble chart 59

project timeline or Gantt chart 61

Furthermore there are universal connectors to con-

nect the smart-elements (see Universal connectors onpage 49 for more information).

And finally More offers additional valuable tools (seeMore tools on page 91) to facilitate your daily work withPowerPoint.

think-cell uses the same language as in the menus anddialogs of your installation of Microsoft Office, provided

that it is supported by think-cell. If it is not yet supported,

English is used.

Rotating and flipping charts

The small arrow markers around the stacked, clustered,100%, line, area, waterfall and Mekko chart symbols inthe Elements menu let you insert flipped (and – if appli-cable – rotated) versions of these charts.

Most charts can also be rotated after insertion using a

rotation handle. Simply select the chart and drag the ro-tation handle to the desired position: Click with the leftmouse button on the rotation handle and, while holdingthe button down, drag the handle to one of the four pos-sible red-highlighted positions and release the button.

Note: If you want to flip the content of the rows (or columns) you have to use the Flip Rows (or Flip

Columns) button in the internal data sheet (see Reverse

order in data sheet on page 29).

Resizing smart-elements

When a smart-element is selected, resize handles areshown at the corners and in the center of the bound-ary lines. To resize a smart-element, drag one of thesehandles.



Basic concepts 22

You can also set two or more smart-elements to the same

width or height. This also works if you include Power-Point shapes in your selection. First, select all objects thatyou want to set to the same width or height (see Multi-selection on the next page). Then, choose Same

Height or Same Width from the context menu of a

smart-element included in the selection. All objects willbe resized to the same height or width, respectively.

The height or width of all elements is set to the largestheight or width among the individual elements.

Selecting charts and features

think-cell’s smart-elements (charts) not only consist of the segments corresponding to the values in the datasheet. They also contain labels, axes, difference arrows,connectors and so forth. These elements and the datasegments are called features and they form the parts of

smart-elements.You can distinguish a feature by the orange frame thatappears when the mouse pointer is over it. When youclick it, the frame turns blue to mark it as the currentlyselected feature. Additionally a floating toolbar appears.It contains a set of property controls you can use to givethe feature a different look. It is a good idea to explore

a newly-inserted chart to get an overview of the features

it is made of and their properties.When you right-click on a feature, its context menu ap-pears. You use it to add additional features to the chartor remove those currently visible.

Buttons whose functions are unavailable for the currentselection are greyed out. The context-menu of the en-tire smart-element is invoked by right-clicking the back-

ground of the chart.

Features always belong to their respective smart-elementand can itself have further features. As an example, thevertical axis of a line chart is a feature of the chart itself,while the tickmarks along the axis are features of theaxis. Consequently you use the chart’s context menu toswitch on or off the vertical axis and the axis’ contextmenu to toggle whether tickmarks are shown.

There are several ways to remove a feature:

– Left-click the feature to select it and press the£

¢

¡Delete or

£

¢

¡ key on your keyboard.

– Right-click the feature to open the think-cell contextmenu. Click the Delete button to remove the fea-

ture from the smart-element.



Basic concepts 23

– Open the think-cell context menu that you used to add

the feature. Click the same button again to remove it.You cannot remove data segments from the chart in thisway. All data segments shown are controlled by the in-ternal data sheet. If you delete a cell of the internal datasheet, the corresponding data segment is removed fromthe chart.

Note: Buttons which toggle the presence of a feature,e.g. if series labels are shown in a chart or not, change

their state accordingly. For example, after you have cho-sen Add Series Label to add series labels to the chart,

the button changes to Remove Series Label. In the fol-

lowing, generally only the state of the button for addingthe feature is shown.

Detailed information on all the available features is pro-vided in the following chapters accompanying the re-spective chart types they apply to.

Multi-selection

You can quickly select a range of features that belong to-gether – this is called logical multi-selection. It works thesame way as with files in Microsoft Windows Explorer:Select the first feature in the desired range with a singleleft mouse button click, then hold down

£

¢

¡Shift ⇑ and click

the last feature in the range. When you move the mouse

while holding down

£

¢

¡Shift ⇑ , the range of features that isgoing to be selected is highlighted in orange.

To add single features to the selection, or to removesingle features from the selection, hold down

£

¢

¡Ctrl while

clicking. Again, this is the same way multi-selecting filesworks in Microsoft Windows Explorer.

Logical multi-selection is particularly useful if you want to

colorize an entire data series, or if you want to changethe formatting of a range of labels. You can even usemulti-selection to paste text into multiple labels at once(see Pasting text into multiple labels on page 35).

Keyboard navigation

In many cases, you do not need the mouse to selectother objects on a slide. Instead, you can hold down

the

£

¢

¡ Alt key and use the cursor arrow keys

£

¢

¡←

£

¢

¡→

£

¢

¡↑

£

¢

¡↓ toselect another object.

– When a PowerPoint shape or smart-element is se-lected,

£

¢

¡ Alt with cursor keys selects the next shape that

is found in the arrow’s direction.

– When a chart’s feature is selected,£

¢

¡ Alt with cursor keys

selects the next feature of the same kind in the chart.

However, you can only shift the focus to features of thesame chart. Use the mouse again to select a feature of another chart.

Panning

When editing a slide in a zoomed view (like 400%) itis often hard to move the slide around and locate theregion that you want to work with next. With think-cellinstalled, you can use the middle mouse button to “pan”

the slide: Just grab the slide with your mouse pointer byclicking the middle mouse button and move it where youneed it.

If your mouse has a wheel instead of a middle button,you can achieve the same effect by pressing down thewheel without turning it.



Basic concepts 24

Note: You probably know that in PowerPoint you can

zoom in and out using the mouse wheel with the

£

¢

¡Ctrlkey held down. Together with the panning feature fromthink-cell, using zoomed views for slide design becomeseasy and fast.

Formatting and style

Whenever you select a smart-element or feature by click-ing on it a floating toolbar appears. It contains property

controls to change the look of the feature. Only the con-trols which are applicable to the selected feature areshown in the floating toolbar.

In this chapter several general types of controls are de-scribed. Through the course of the following chaptersdetailed information is provided for all property controlsof the floating toolbar in the context of specific chart andfeature types.

Color and fill

The color control applies to features thathave a fill color and to lines in linecharts. It does not apply to text, becausethe text color and the text backgroundcolor are always set automatically.The list contains Like Excel Cell if you haveenabled Use Excel Fill in the color scheme

control (see Color scheme on the next page). To reset thefill color of a segment you colored manually choose Like

Excel Cell to use Excel’s cell formatting.

If you need other colors than offered by the color control,select the Custom option from the dropdown box. Youwill then be presented with a color picker where you canchoose any color you like.

Note: If you want to apply a color other than black or white, make sure that the slider for the brightness (on

the very right of the dialog) is not set to minimum or maximum. When you move the slider up or down, youcan watch how the color changes in the colored field onthe bottom of the dialog.

think-cell adds the most recently used custom colors tothe color control for quick access. You will find a divider line in the list of most recently used colors: The colorsabove the divider are saved within the presentation, so

you can rest assured that your colleagues have themavailable when editing the presentation. The colors be-low the divider are available on your computer only, be-cause you were using them in a different presentation.Both sections can hold up to 8 colors. When you use a9th custom color, the first one is removed from the list.

You should use the color property only to highlight a sin-gle shape or segment. If you need to colorize an entirechart, use the color scheme property instead.



Basic concepts 25

Color scheme

The color scheme control appliesconsistent coloring to all seg-ments of a chart. The coloringis automatically updated when aseries is added or removed. For these reasons, the color scheme property should be preferred over the color property to ensure consistent chart colors. See sectionChanging default colors and fonts on the following pagefor more information.

When you check Use Excel Fill think-cell applies the color from Excel’s cell formatting to the chart in PowerPoint.This is particularly convenient if you want to control thechart colors through your Excel data source in the caseof a linked chart. For instance the Conditional Formatting

can help you to color positive values green and negativevalues red.

If you have enabled UseExcel fill and the cell correspond-

ing to a data segment does not have a fill color set aspart of Excel’s cell formatting, then the appropriate color from the color scheme currently used is applied, i.e. theExcel fill color is applied on top of the color scheme.

Note: Using Excel’s cell formatting to set a segment’sfill color does not work if you use conditional format-ting rules in Excel and these rules contain functions or references to other cells.

Sorting

The sorting control applies a specific order to the seg-ments in a chart. The default Values in sheet order or-ders segments in the same order they appear in the datasheet. If you choose Values in reverse sheet order the lastseries in the data sheet will be displayed at the top of the

chart and the first series in the data sheet at the bottom

of the chart.think-cell can also sort the segments in a category basedon their value. Smallest at the top will sort all categoriesso that the smallest segment in each category is at thetop, Greatest at the top will display the segment with thegreatest numerical value at the top. As a consequenceof sorting, segments of the same data series, with thesame color, will appear at different positions in differentcategories.

Line style

The line style control applies to the out-lines of segments of column, bar and piecharts, lines in line charts, and to valuelines (see Value line on page 48). You canalso change a connector’s appearance us-ing the line style control. In addition, the

outline of the plot-area in all charts can be specifiedusing the line style control.

Outline colors

You can change the color of an outlinewith this control. It works for segments of column, bar and pie charts.

Line scheme

The line scheme control specifies the appear-ance of lines in line charts. The supportedline schemes apply consistent line styles andcoloring to all lines in the chart.



Basic concepts 26

Marker shape

The marker shape control can be used toadd or change markers for data pointsin line and scatter charts. Note that themarker scheme control should be used in-stead of marker shapes to add consistentmarkers to all the data points in a line or scatter chart.

Marker schemeThe marker scheme control applies con-sistent markers to data points in scatter or line charts. The markers are automat-ically updated when data points, groupsand series are added or removed. The marker schemecontrol should be preferred over the marker shape con-trol when adding consistent markers to an entire line or scatter chart.

Changing default colors and fonts

think-cell can use PowerPoint’s scheme colors for manychart elements (e.g. axes, text, arrows, etc.). These col-ors as well as font definitions are always taken fromthe default colors and fonts of your presentation file. If the defaults are designed correctly, think-cell will followseamlessly when you choose to switch the color scheme.

To adjust the default color settings, simply change your presentation’s color scheme:

In PowerPoint 2003

1. In the toolbar, go to Format → Slide Design...

2. In the task pane, click on the header of the taskpane and switch to Slide Design - Color Schemes.

3. On the bottom of the task pane, click on Edit Color

Schemes....4. Adjust the colors to match your corporate design.

In PowerPoint 2007 and later

1. In the ribbon, go to Design.

2. In the group Themes, click on Colors.

3. From the drop-down list choose Create New Theme

Colors...

4. Adjust the colors to match your corporate design.To adjust the default font settings, simply change your presentation’s slide master:

In PowerPoint 2003

1. In the toolbar, go to View →Master then Slide Master .

2. Adjust the fonts of the master text styles to matchyour corporate design.

In PowerPoint 2007 and later 1. In the ribbon, go to View .

2. In the group Presentation Views, click on Slide Master .

3. Adjust the fonts of the master subtitle style to matchyour corporate design.

In general, it is advisable to store these defaults in aPowerPoint template file (*.pot) and to derive all new

presentations from this template file. Please refer to thePowerPoint help for information how to do this.



5. Data entry

Internal data sheet

Every chart created with think-cell has an associateddata sheet, except for the Gantt Chart, that offers acalender instead. The data sheet is opened by double-clicking the chart or by clicking the Open Datasheet

button that appears when the chart is selected. The datasheet also opens immediately when a new chart is in-

serted.think-cell uses a customized Microsoft Excel sheet for data input, which you can use in the same way as reg-ular Excel. You can use all the same shortcut keys, youcan enter formulas instead of numbers, and so forth. Butof course you can also use an Excel file as a data source(see Excel data links on page 80).

To insert or delete a row (or column) you can use the

respective buttons in the toolbar of the data sheet. Thestandard buttons for undo and redo and cut, copy andpaste are available as well.

Absolute and relative values

The think-cell data sheet alternatively supports entry of absolute or relative values. The distinction between the

two types of data is made by the Excel cell formatting.You can always toggle the interpretation of a column’sdata with the button.

Keep in mind that for the display in the chart, it doesnot matter if you enter percentages or absolute values.If you enter absolute values but want to label the chartwith percentages (or vice versa), think-cell performs thenecessary conversion (see Label content on page 34).

A simple data sheet with only absolute values looks likethis:

For simple charts based on absolute values only, the100% row on top of the chart data can be left empty.If you choose to label the chart with percentages, the



Data entry 28

percentages are calculated from the absolute values,

assuming the sum of each column to be “100%”. Youcan enter explicit values in the “100%” row to overridethis assumption. The following data sheet calculates per-centages based on 100% being equal to a value of 50:

Alternatively, you can fill in the data sheet with percent-ages. Again, you can choose to label the chart withabsolute or relative values. In order to have think-cell

calculate absolute values from the percentages you en-tered, you should fill in the absolute values that repre-sent 100% in the 100% row. The following data sheetuses percentages to specify the same data values:

The default behavior of the data sheet depends on thechart type: 100%-charts and area or Mekko charts with

%-axis as well as pie charts default to percentages, all

other charts default to absolute values.

Transposing the data sheet

The layout of a think-cell data sheet depends on thechart type. In bar charts, for example, columns containthe data for a single series, while in column charts, rowscontain the data for a single series. Here is a typical datasheet for a column chart:

The size of a think-cell data sheet is limited to a max-imum of 256 columns and 65536 rows. If the datafor your chart requires more than 256 columns, youcan use the Transpose Sheet button to transpose the

data sheet, swapping the row and column data together with any category/series interpretation. Here is the trans-posed version of the previous column chart data sheet:



Data entry 29

Transposing the data sheet lets you create charts wherethe data sheet would normally require more than 256columns, and can often be used to simplify data entrywhen working with a large amount of data.

Note: The limitation of the number of rows and columsis due to the same limitation of Excel data sheets in gen-eral in Excel XP and 2003. For compatibility reasons thelimitation also applies when using Office 2007 or later.

Reverse order in data sheet

In think-cell, the visual order of data in the data sheetalways corresponds to the order of the data in the chart.This is also true for flipped charts (see Rotating and flip-ping charts on page 21). If you want to flip the data inthe data sheet, you can use the Flip Rows (or Flip

Columns) button in the data sheet’s toolbar.

Note: This feature is particularly convenient to con-vert data from former MS Graph charts, because in MSGraph data is entered in headfirst order.

Note: If you have Microsoft’s Chinese Conversion fea-ture installed, you will find the options Simplified Chinese

and Traditional Chinese in the data sheet’s More menu.



6. Text labels

think-cell takes care of correct and readable labeling. Avoid using PowerPoint text boxes to label your chartsas they will be ignored by think-cell’s automatic labelplacement. When you create labels from think-cell’scontext menu, the default content is taken from the datasheet or calculated by the program (in the case of col-umn totals, averages, and alike).

In addition, you can always enter additional text or re-

place the default text inside think-cell’s automatic labels.When a label is selected, you can start typing, overwrit-ing the current text. If you want to keep the existing text,enter text editing mode by pressing

£

¢

¡F2 and use the cur-

sor keys and£

¢

¡Home/

£

¢

¡End keys to navigate within the label

text. This section explains how think-cell’s labels work indetail.

Types of labelsHere is a list of labels that are supported for differenttypes of charts, and the buttons in the context menu toadd or remove them:

Label type Chart types Menu buttons

Category column1/line/area

Series column/line/area

Segment column

Point line/area

Total column/area

Inside pie

Outside pie

Activity Gantt

Item Gantt

Scale Gantt

1 including stacked chart, clustered chart, 100% chart,Mekko chart, waterfall chart, and their rotated variations



Text labels 31

Automatic label placement

When using think-cell, labels are automatically placedat their appropriate positions. A number of built-in rulesensures that labels are always placed for easy readabilityand pleasant aesthetics. These rules are specific to thechart type and to the type of the label in question. Hereare some examples.

For segment labels in column charts:

– If there is enough space, place all labels centered.

– If a label is larger than the segment it belongs to, puta colored rectangle underneath the label.

– If two labels are too close together, offset one to theleft and the other to the right.

– If there is not enough space inside a segment, placethe label outside the segment and add a line that

points to the related segment.

For inside labels in pie charts:

– If there is enough space, place them as close to thesegment’s outside border as possible.

– If a label is larger than the segment it belongs to, puta colored rectangle underneath the label.

– If two labels are too close together, offset one of them

towards the center of the pie.

Manual label placement

In general, think-cell automatically places all labels atappropriate positions. If a label can be placed at mul-tiple positions, you can manually change think-cell’splacement decision:

1. Select the label. If a drag icon appears at the lower

right corner of the selection then this indicates thatthere are alternative locations for the label.

2. Drag the selection frame or the drag icon with themouse. While you are dragging, available locationshighlight, and the blue selection frame jumps tothese locations.

3. Drop the label at the desired location.

Labels that do not show the drag icon when selected, donot offer alternative locations.

When manually placing a series label, alternative loca-tions for the label will include any existing legend (Leg-end on page 50) for the chart.



Text labels 32

Once you have manually placed a label at a specific po-sition, think-cell will respect your decision and maintain

the label’s position even when the chart layout changes.If you want a manually placed segment label to be putback into automatic mode, drag the mouse pointer ontothe target Drag here for Automatic or click the En-

able Automatic Placement button from the label’s contextmenu.

Note: You can also drag multiple labels at the sametime. To do so, use multi-selection (Multi-selection onpage 23) and move one of the selected labels as a rep-resentative.

Label rotation

Many labels can be rotated by 90 degrees counter-clockwise or clockwise. To rotate a label, select it anddrag the rotation handle to the desired position. Labelsthat do not show the rotation handle when selected can-not be rotated.

Note: You can also rotate multiple labels at the sametime. To do so, use multi-selection (Multi-selection onpage 23) and rotate one of the selected labels as a rep-resentative.

Text fields

You can add arbitrary text to all labels that are createdwith think-cell. The numbers in the labels are updatedwhenever the data sheet changes, even when the labelcontains extra text. This is particularly convenient for an-notations or footnote marks. To use this feature, simplytype into the text box as usual.

When you move the cursor or select text, you will no-tice that the numbers from the data sheet behave like asingle character. This concept is called a text field. You

can either overwrite the text field or add text before or after it, but you cannot change it. Any numbers that arebased on the data sheet and are displayed in chart la-bels, are created as text fields. Each text field refers to acertain number created from the Excel data. This couldbe a single cell in the data sheet or a calculation involv-ing multiple cells. Whenever the data source of the textfield is changed, the numbers in the label are updated

to reflect the change. As long as you do not delete or overwrite a label’s textfield, the numbers in the text box are kept consistentwith the numbers in the data sheet. You may, however,choose to delete the field and replace it with some other text or numbers. In this case, the text in the label will nolonger be updated.



Text labels 33

It is not obvious when a numeric text field has been over-

written with some other number. To inform you that thelabel is no longer automatically updated, an exclama-tion mark pops up next to the label. The exclamationmark also pops up next to category or series labels if youentered text in the data sheet but then replaced the textfield with custom text. Note that the exclamation mark ispurely informative and that overwriting text fields is oftenperfectly legitimate.

To reset a label and (re-)insert text fields, use the labelcontent control (Label content on the following page) or

simply click on the exclamation mark, if there is one.Note: think-cell uses a particular functionality of Power-Point called RTF date fields to implement automaticallyupdating text fields. PowerPoint uses this functionality it-self for automatically updating date fields (while the textcursor is active, choose Insert, Date & Time, check Up-

date automatically , click OK ). Unfortunately, this Power-Point functionality is limited to 57 characters. Any addi-

tional text will be truncated. For non-numeric text fields,e.g., series labels, we suggest that you simply replacethe text field with the desired text directly in the Power-Point textbox. Having the text in PowerPoint rather thanin the data sheet also makes it easy to add line breaksfor optimal text flow.

Note:£

¢

¡ Alt +

£

¢

¡

can be used to add line breaks to text in

the data sheet while

£

¢

¡F7

can be used to spell-check datasheet text.

Text label property controls

Font

The font control applies to all text labels. Click on a fontto change the setting of the selected features. When youchange the font for the smart-element, all text that is later

created within the same smart-element adopts the newfont.

Number format

The number format control applies to textfields that display chart data. To use thenumber format control, enter an example number withthe desired format. The actual number you enter is not

important, it is only the number format that matters. Thedropdown box provides quick access to the most com-mon formats. Also, up to four of your most recently usedcustom formats are available in the dropdown box. Ab-solute and relative values can have different format.

You can use the following punctuation characters for thegrouping of thousands: comma, point, single prime andspace. For the decimal point, you can use point, comma

or momayyez. However, you cannot use the same char-acter for the grouping of thousands and the decimalpoint.

For example:

– Type 1.000,00 to display numbers with a comma for the decimal point, with two decimal places, and thou-sands separated by points.



Text labels 34

– Type 1000 to display integer numbers with no group-

ing.– You can add arbitrary prefixes and suffixes, with or

without spacing: $12.345 Mio

– If you want all numbers to be signed, just enter a lead-ing or trailing plus: +1,234

– Type -USD 1,234 to place the algebraic sign in frontof the currency, type EUR -1.234 to place it in front of the value.

– Enclose everything including prefix and suffix inbrackets, e.g. (1,234 Mio) to display bracketednegative values. If only a prefix or suffix is enclosedthen the brackets are taken as literal characters, e.g.1,234 (metric tons).

– Type –1,234 with a leading en dash to replace all mi-nuses with en dashes.

think-cell can also use a number format that has been

set in Excel. To use this, first choose the desired num-ber format in Excel using the Format Cells... dialog andthen select Excel Format from the bottom of think-cell’snumber format control.

In the context of currency, some people use single primeas a symbol for million and double prime as a symbolfor billion. If you want to use this convention with think-cell, start with entering millions into the data sheet or

use the magnitude control to show the values in units of millions (see Magnitude on the current page). Then, en-ter the appropriate format string into the number formatcontrol. If you do not use the single prime in the formatstring, the numbers followed by a double prime alwaysrepresent billions – even if there are no more numbersfollowing the double prime.

Consider the number 3842.23 (or the number

3842230000 combined with a magnitude setting of ×106).

Number format control Output

1"234'000 3”842’2301"234'0 3”842’21"00 3”841" 4”

Magnitude

Values from data sources often have magni-tudes that are not appropriate for data presen-tation. In think-cell, you can solve this problemby altering the magnitude of the labels withoutchanging the data source.Here is a simple example: Your Excel table isfilled with seven-digit values (e.g. 3,600,000.00) butyou would prefer to show values in units of millions. Sim-

ply select×

10

6

from the floating toolbar and the labelswill show the appropriately scaled values.

Label content

Most labels have a label content control. Usethe control to choose text fields with which tofill the label. For example, the segment labelsin the column chart can show absolute values

and/or percentages. (For details about filling in the datasheet refer to Absolute and relative values on page 27.)

Some labels only have one entry in this dropdown box.You can use it to restore the label’s text field if it wasdeleted.



Text labels 35

Pasting text into multiple labels

With think-cell, creating data driven charts is quick andeasy, but you still have to type the text. If you alreadyhave it available in some table or text file, think-cell canhelp you there, too.

The text may be in a file in Microsoft Excel or MicrosoftWord or in any other kind of text file. In Excel, labels arenaturally separated into table cells. In plain text files,labels should be organized in columns (separated by

line breaks) or in rows (separated by tab characters).Pasting multi-selections is not only possible with chartlabels but can also be used with any native PowerPointshape.

1. In your source file, select the text for all the labelsor shapes and copy them to the clipboard (

£

¢

¡Ctrl+

£

¢

¡C

or Edit → Copy ).

2. Switch to PowerPoint. If the objects that are going toreceive the text are not yet there, create them now.These objects can be native PowerPoint shapes aswell as think-cell labels.

3. Multi-select the shapes or labels that you want to fillwith text. For more tips on multi-selection, refer toMulti-selection on page 23.

4. Paste the text from the clipboard (£

¢

¡Ctrl+

£

¢

¡ V or Edit →

Paste).

If the text from the source is properly separated byline breaks and/or tab characters, each of the selectedshapes or labels in PowerPoint receives the correspond-ing text from the clipboard.



7. Column chart, line chart and area chart

Column chart and stacked column chart

Icon in Elements menu:

In think-cell, we do not distinguish between simple col-umn charts and stacked column charts. If you want tocreate a simple column chart, enter only one series (row)of data in the data sheet. For a quick tour of the columnchart, refer to the example in chapter Introduction tothink-cell on page 14.

Bar charts in think-cell are simply rotated column charts,and can be used exactly as column charts. In addition,you can create butterfly charts by placing two bar charts“back-to-back”. To do so, apply the functions rotation(see Rotating and flipping charts on page 21) and same

scale (see Same scale on page 43). Then remove thecategory labels for one of the charts.

For the steps to create a stacked clustered chart, seeClustered chart on the current page.

Clustered chart




Column chart, line chart and area chart 37

The clustered chart is a variant of the stacked column

chart, with the segments arranged side-by-side. If youwant to arrange stacks of segments side by side, youcan create a stacked clustered chart.

To create a stacked clustered chart, follow these steps:

1. Insert a stacked chart.

2. Click onto the baseline between the columns, drag

the gap arrow to the left and set the gap width to“0”.

3. Click onto the baseline where you want to insert afull category gap and drag the gap arrow to theright until the tooltip shows “1 Category Gap”; thishas to be repeated for all clusters.

If there is an even number of stacks in a cluster, the labelcannot be centered to the whole cluster. Use a Power-

Point text box as a label in this case.

100% chart


The 100% chart is a variation of a stacked column chartwith all columns typically adding up to the same height

(i.e., 100%). The labels of the 100% chart support the

label content property, which lets you choose if you wantto display absolute values, percentages, or both (Labelcontent on page 34).

With think-cell, you can create 100% charts withcolumns that do not necessarily add up to 100%. If acolumn totals to more or less than 100%, it is renderedaccordingly. For details about filling in the data sheetrefer to Absolute and relative values on page 27.

Line chart


The line chart uses lines to connect data points belong-ing to the same series. The appearance of the line chartis controlled by the line scheme, marker scheme, linestyle and marker shape controls in the floating toolbar.




See Formatting and style on page 24 for details on thesecontrols. Labels for the data points are not shown by de-fault but may be displayed using the line chart Add

Point Label context menu button.

If the category values of a line chart are strictly increas-ing numbers or dates then the x-axis will automaticallyswitch to a value axis (see Value axis on page 40).When dates are used the date format can be changedby multi-selecting all category labels (see Multi-selectionon page 23) and typing a date format into the control

(see Date format codes on page 72). If you want to showmore labels than would fit next to each other horizon-tally you can use label rotation (see Label rotation onpage 32).

The horizontal axis can only switch from category tovalue mode if the following conditions are met:

– All category cells in the data sheet contain numbersand Excel’s cell format is also set to General or Number

or all category cells in the data sheet contain datesand Excel’s cell format is also set to Date.

– The numbers or dates in the category cells are strictlyincreasing from left to right.

– The y-axis is not set to Crosses Between Categories (seePositioning the value axis on page 41). If only thisrequirement is preventing a switch to the value axismode, you can use Make Value Axis from the axis

context menu to switch to Crosses At Categories andthereby switch to the value axis mode as well.

The line chart can also display a second vertical valueaxis. Please refer to Secondary Axis on page 44 for fur-ther information.

Smoothed lines

If you prefer a smoother appearance of the lines in aline chart, you can turn on this setting. First right-clickon the desired line, then use the Set to Smooth Line

button.

Error bars

Error bars can be used to indicate deviations. By meansof the error bars the following chart can be created.

1. Create a line chart with three series. The first seriesreflects the upper deviation, the second series re-flects the mean and the third series reflects the lower deviation.

2. Right-click the center line and choose Add Error

Bars from the context menu.

3. Remove the series labels for the upper and lower series.

Select one of the error bars to change the marker shapeand color for the upper and lower deviation and the linetype of the bar for all error bars. You can also select anindividual error bar marker to change the properties for this marker only.




A handle appears at each end when you select an error bar. You can drag these handles to select which lines theerror bars should span. You can also visualize intervalsinstead of the deviation around a central value if you setthe error bar to only span two adjacent lines.

Interpolation

In line, area and area 100% charts, the Interpolate

button can be used to display a chart with linear inter-polation used for any missing data values in a series. Inline charts, interpolation can be enabled and disabledfor individual series in a chart. In area charts, it can onlybe applied to the whole chart, because the series stackon each other.

Area chart

Area chart


An area chart can be thought of as a stacked line chart,with the data points representing the sum of the valuesin the categories rather than the individual values. Theappearance of area charts is set using the color schemecontrol. Labels for the data points are not shown by de-fault but may be displayed using the area chart Add

Point Label context menu button. The area chart Add

Total context menu button can be used to display totallabels. Linear interpolation can be enabled using theInterpolate button (see Interpolation on the current

page).

Area 100% chart


The area 100% chart is a variant of the area chart withthe sum of all the values in a category typically repre-senting 100%. If the values in a category total more or less than 100%, then the chart will be rendered accord-ingly. See Absolute and relative values on page 27 for more details about specifying data values. The labels of the area 100% chart can display absolute values, per-centages, or both (Label content on page 34). Linear interpolation can be enabled using the Interpolate

button (see Interpolation on this page).




Combination chart


A combination chart combines line and column seg-ments in a single chart. Line chart on page 37 and Col-umn chart and stacked column chart on page 36 de-scribe in detail the usage of lines and column segmentsin charts.

To convert a line to a series of segments, simply highlight

the line and select the Set to Segment Type buttonfrom the context menu. To convert segments to a line,simply highlight a segment of the series and select the

Set to Line Type button from the context menu. The

data sources of line charts, stacked charts and combi-nation charts have the same format.

This function can be used in stacked and clustered col-umn charts as well as in line charts.

Scales and axes

Value axis

In menu: Chart

Menu item:

Use this feature to display a value y-axis.

Note: The x-axis of a Mekko chart is also a value axis.Similarly, scatter and bubble charts have two value axesthat are always displayed. In addition, the x-axis of aline chart may be a value axis, rather than a categoryaxis (see Line chart on page 37). The x-axes of all other charts are standard category axes.

Adjusting the scale of a value axis. When selected, avalue axis has three handles:

– Value axes are usually scaled by think-cell. You can,however, manually scale a value axis by dragging thehandles at the end of the value axis. The values on theaxis must always include the range between the low-est and largest value in the data sheet. If you do notwant to show a specific value, either remove it fromthe data sheet or hide the respective data sheet row or column. Automatic value axis scaling can be restoredby dragging the handles until the tooltip indicates Au-

tomatic. Holding down£

¢

¡ Alt while dragging ensures that

the value axis scale will not revert to automatic mode.




– The tickmark spacing for value axes is usually calcu-lated by think-cell. You can, however, manually ad-just the tickmark spacing by dragging the middle han-dle. As you drag, the handle will jump to supportedtickmark spacings, with a tooltip indicating the se-lected spacing. Releasing the handle will apply theindicated tickmark spacing to the axis. Automatic tick-mark spacing can be restored by reducing the tick-mark spacing until the tooltip indicates Automatic.

– The Set Same Scale button can be used to apply

the same scale to multiple charts. See Same scale onpage 43 for further details.

Positioning the value axis. A value y-axis can be movedby selecting and dragging the axis with the mouse. Whiledragging, available alternative locations for the axis willbe highlighted. Dragging to the desired location andreleasing will move the axis.

You will notice, when selecting and dragging the value

y-axis of a line chart, that two locations on either sideof the chart are highlighted. Dragging to either of thelocations will position the y-axis on the appropriate sideof the chart.

The location selected, however, also sets the crossingbehavior for the chart. Two distinct styles of crossing be-havior are supported for line charts:

– Crosses At Categories The y-axis crosses the x-axis atthe center of a category. In this case the data pointsof the first category are placed directly on the y-axis.

– Crosses Between Categories The y-axis crosses the x-axis between two categories. Consequently, the datapoints are offset from the border of the chart.

Regardless of the crossing behavior of the axis, the x-position of data points always corresponds to the center of the category.

Selecting either of the innermost highlighted locationswill set the behavior to Crosses At Categories, while se-lecting either of the outermost highlighted locations willset the behavior to Crosses Between Categories.

The and buttons in the value axis context menu

can also be used to alter the crossing behavior.

Value axis context menu. Value axes have their owncontext menu. It shows the following buttons:

Add Tick Marks Add or remove tickmarks.

Add Tick Labels Add or remove tickmark labels.

Add Grid Lines Add or remove gridlines.

Add Title Add or remove axis title. You can drag the

title to choose its placement.

Set Logarithmic/Linear Scale Set the axis to a

logarithmic or linear scale (see Logarithmic Scaleon page 44).

Add Second Y axis Add a secondary axis (see Sec-

ondary Axis on page 44).

Fit Scale To Data Revert the scale and tickmark spac-

ing to automatic sizing if they have been modified




either by the user or by a same scale operation (seeSame scale on the next page).

Add Break Add a break at the current mouse pointer

position (see Value axis break on this page).

Set Crosses At/Between Categories Alter the

crossing behavior for a line chart.

Value axis break

In menu: Segment, axis, line, area

Menu item:

Use a value axis break to shrink a particularly large seg-ment and enhance readability for the smaller segments.To add a value axis break, click the part of the seg-ment or axis where you want the break to go and openthe context menu. When adding a value axis break, theexact position where you right-click a segment or axismakes a difference.

Any break you insert applies to the value axis (if shown)and to all segments sharing the same range of the axis.For this reason, you can not add a break to the axisat any position where there is a segment border in anyof the chart’s columns. A break can only be added if at the mouse pointer location there is some part of thevalue axis big enough to display at least the two linesthat visualize the break.

This is illustrated by the following example. No breakcan be added to the very top part of the second col-umn, because the top of the third column is too close.However, within the range of the third column’s seg-ment, there is enough space for the break. Since bothcolumns share this range of the value axis, both seg-ments are broken:

Note: If you apply the same scale operation (see Samescale on the next page) to charts that have value axisbreaks, the breaks are automatically removed. As longas breaks are present, it is impossible to make the se-

lected charts visually comparable. Adjusting the break’s extent. You can adjust the sizeof a broken segment by dragging the lines that appear when you select the break. These lines mark the rangeof the scale that is compressed to save space. Drag thelines to determine the size of the compressed part of thescale. If you drag a line far enough for the compressed




range of the scale to take as much space as was orig-inally required, the break disappears. The default is tocompress the selected part of the scale as much as pos-sible while leaving enough room for the break lines tobe rendered.

Available break styles. There are two types of breakshapes supported by think-cell. The straight break as il-lustrated above is commonly used for standard columncharts. The wiggle break as illustrated below is con-venient to save space in charts with wide or adjacentcolumns. If enough space is available, you can tog-gle between the two shapes with Set Wiggle/Straight

Shape in the break’s context menu.

Note: In line and area charts only the wiggle style issupported.

Same scale

When there are multiple similar charts on the same slide,

it is often desirable that all of them share the same scale.Only when two charts share the same scale, are thephysical sizes of their bars or columns comparable.

The following example shows two charts which have thesame size, but not the same scale. Note that the col-umn that represents 7 units in the waterfall chart is the

same height as the column that represents 47 units inthe column chart.

To make columns from different charts visually compa-rable, select all those charts together. Then, open thethink-cell context menu of one of them and click the

Set Same Scale button to resize smaller scales to

match the largest one. In the above example the result-ing charts look like this:

When the data represented by a chart changes, it is pos-sible that this chart rescales. If you still want to keep thesame scale for multiple charts, you may have to reap-ply the same scale operation. The same applies if youmanually changed the scale of one of the charts.

To revert the same scale, select one or multiple chartsand click the Fit Scale to Data button. If you are not

sure which charts share the same scales, the easiest way




is to revert the same scale for all charts, then to selectthe requested charts and to activate same scale.

Note: If you apply the same scale operation to chartsthat have value axis breaks, the breaks are automaticallyremoved (see Value axis break on page 42). As long asbreaks are present, it is impossible to make the selectedcharts visually comparable.

Logarithmic Scale

You can switch to a logarithmic scale by using theSet Logarithmic Scale button from the value axis

context menu. To revert to a linear scale choose Set

Linear Scale.

Note: Due to a limitation in Microsoft Graph an axiswith a logarithmic scale can only have tickmarks at pow-ers of 10, e.g. at 0.1, 1, 10. The axis must also beginand end at a power of 10.

Logarithmic scaling is not supported when it is mathe-matically not appropriate. Negative values are placedon the baseline and an exclamation mark is shownnext to the label explaining that the value cannot berepresented on a logarithmic scale. Also, an axis alwaysuses a linear scale if multiple series that are added upto a total are associated with the axis.

Secondary Axis

Charts containing lines may have an additional, sec-ondary y-axis. You can add a secondary y-axis, and as-sociate a line with this axis, by highlighting a line andselecting the Set to Right/Left Axis button from the

line context menu. If a chart has two y-axes, then youcan use the same Set to Right/Left Axis button to alter

the y-axis association of individual lines in the chart. A secondary axis is a fully-fledged value axis ( Value axison page 40) and may be scaled independently.

Gap width and category gap

The basic spacing between columns in a chart is speci-fied by the gap width. Extra spacing between individualpairs of columns may be added by inserting a categorygap.

The gap width for all columns can be altered by click-ing on the baseline and dragging the handle a smalldistance. The handle snaps to the default gap width.In order to achieve a consistent appearance for chartsthroughout your presentation, the default gap widthshould be used when possible.

Category gaps can be introduced by dragging the samehandle further to the right until the category gap tooltip




appears. The handle snaps to multiples of the columnwidth.

Altering the gap width or introducing category gaps by

simply dragging preserves the width of the columns, re-sulting in an increase or decrease of the overall chartwidth.

You can ensure that the overall chart width is preservedby holding down the

£

¢

¡Ctrl key while dragging: the column

widths will be increased or decreased to accommodatethe altered gaps.

Note: In some cases, a break in the baseline (see Cat-

egory axis break on this page) may be a space-savingalternative to a category gap.

Category axis break

In menu: Category axis column gap

Menu item:

A category axis break indicates a break in the continuity

of the category axis scale. To insert the break, right-clickon the category axis between two columns and selectthe respective menu item.

Arrows and values

Difference arrows

In menu: Chart, segment1, point2

Menu items:

Difference arrows can be used in charts to visualizethe difference between pairs of columns, segments or points. The difference is automatically calculated and

updated whenever the underlying data changes. The textlabel for the difference (chapter Text labels on page 30)supports font, number format and label content prop-erties (Font on page 33, Number format on page 33,Label content on page 34).

Two distinct styles of difference arrows are supported bythink-cell: segment (or point) difference arrows and cat-egory difference arrows. Segment difference arrows are

designed to show differences between pairs of segmentsor points in a chart; category difference arrows are de-signed to show differences between column totals.

1 column and waterfall charts2 line and area charts

C l h li h d h 46




Segment difference arrow. Segment difference arrowscan be added by selecting the or button in

the context menu. You can use the handles that appear when the difference arrow is selected to set the two val-ues that are to be compared. The ends of the differencearrow can be attached to column segments, data pointsor to a value line, if there is one ( Value line on page 48).

By default, a newly inserted difference arrow stretchesfrom the selected segment or category to the top seg-ment of the next category. You can also determine thedesired start and end segment/category for the differ-ence arrow immediately: Select the start segment andthe end segment at the same time. Then right-click on

one of them and select Add Segment Difference Ar-

row . To select multiple segments at a time, hold down£

¢

¡Ctrl key while selecting (see Multi-selection on page 23).In case of a line or area chart, select the correspondingdata points instead of segments.

If the arrow is so small that the bubble would cover it up,the bubble is automatically placed next to the arrow. Tomanually optimize the layout, you can drag the arrowitself as well as its label to other locations ( Automaticlabel placement on page 31). If you want to place thearrow between two columns, you might want to createan additional gap between the columns (Gap width andcategory gap on page 44).

Category difference arrow. Category difference arrowscan be added by selecting the or button in the

context menu and connecting the ends of the difference

arrow to the categories or columns that are to be com-pared.

C l h t li h t d h t 47




Arrow modes. You can cycle through three arrowmodes. The button in the context menu changes

accordingly and the number in the label is recalculated:

Show an arrow pointing in one direction andcalculate the relative difference.

Show a double-ended arrow and calculatethe absolute difference.

Show an arrow pointing in the other directionand calculate the relative difference.

CAGR arrow

In menus: Chart, segment

Menu item:

This feature visualizes the compound annual growth rate.The range of dates on which the calculation is based istaken from the data sheet cells that are associated withcategory labels. The CAGR is automatically calculatedand updated whenever the underlying data changes. For the calculation to work correctly, it is important that therespective data sheet cells contain the correct dates.

The CAGR from category A to B is calculated as n

√ ∑B∑

A

with n being the number of years in the date range. The30/360 day count convention is followed to determinen when it is not a whole number.

The automatic display of the CAGR is based on a textlabel (chapter Text labels on page 30) and supports fontand number format properties (Font on page 33, Num-ber format on page 33). The arrow itself supports thecolor property (Color and fill on page 24).

By default, only one CAGR is inserted that stretches fromthe selected category to the last category in the chart.

You can use the handles that show up when the CAGRarrow is selected to specify its start and end categories.

You can also determine the desired start and end cate-gories for the CAGR immediately: Select a segment inthe start category and a segment in the end category.Then right-click on one of them and click Add Com-

pound Growth Arrow . If you select segments in more thantwo categories, you will get a CAGR for each pair of successive selected categories. To select multiple seg-ments at a time, hold down

£

¢

¡Ctrl key while selecting (see

Multi-selection on page 23). In case of a line or areachart, select the corresponding data points instead of segments.

Column chart line chart and area chart 48




Series CAGR

The CAGR arrow is always calculated based on the col-umn totals. However, you might also like to visualize thecompound annual growth rate of one of the series.

This can be shown in series labels. Sim-ply select the label and choose the CAGRoption from the right-most menu on thefloating toolbar.

Now the CAGR is calculated series-wise.

To select all series labels in one action, click the firstlabel, then

£

¢

¡Shift ⇑-click the last one (see Multi-selection

on page 23).

Value line

In menu: Chart

Menu item:

This feature displays a line parallel to the x-axis to visu-alize a certain value. You can create multiple value linesper chart, and you can choose to have the line’s labelplaced to the left or to the right of the chart.

Where appropriate, the value line is initialized with andsnaps to the arithmetic mean (stacked chart, clustered

chart) or the weighted mean (Mekko chart) of the col-umn totals. If the line is snapped to such a value, this

value is calculated and automatically updated whendata changes.

You can drag the line as desired. If you need to increasethe precision of the dragging operation, use PowerPointcontrols to zoom in on the slide. You can also use thecursor keys

£

¢

¡←

£

¢

¡→

£

¢

¡↑

£

¢

¡↓ to nudge the line to a specific

value. When using the cursor keys, the line moves inincrements corresponding to the label’s number format.

As always, you can add custom text to the label or re-place the predefined label with your own content. Youcan learn more about labels and text fields in chapter Text labels on page 30. You can also change the la-bel’s font (see Font on page 33) and number format(see Number format on page 33).

100% indicator

In menu: Chart

Menu item:

This feature shows a “100%” mark. It is on by default.You can choose to have the label placed to the left or to the right of the chart.

Column chart line chart and area chart 49




Series connectors

In menus: Chart, segment

Menu item:You can add series connector lines to an entire chart or to a single segment. If you click the connector item of asegment’s menu, a connector line is created at the topright corner of that segment. If you want a connector aspart of a waterfall calculation, you must use the specificwaterfall connector (see Waterfall chart on page 51).

Alternatively, universal connectors (see Universal con-nectors on the current page) can be used when the de-sired connections cannot be achieved using standardconnectors.

Universal connectors


Universal connectors are different from the other dec-orations described in this chapter, because they do not

belong to a specific smart-element or feature. Therefore,they are not available in the think-cell context menu.

Instead, you can insert universal connectors from thethink-cell toolbar. Double-click the toolbar button to in-sert multiple connectors. To leave insertion mode, clickthe button again or press the

£

¢

¡Esc key.

Each smart-element can offer connectable points. Theuniversal connector can connect any two connectablepoints that may or may not belong to the same smart-element. Use the universal connector if you need an un-

usual connector that is not supported by the chart itself.

You can also use the universal connector to connect twodifferent charts. The handles at the ends of the connector snap to connectable points while you move them. The

handle in the middle of the connector can be dragged tochange the straight connector to one with a right angle.

Note: The universal connector visually connects two ob-jects, but it has no effect on the calculation of the water-fall chart. If you want a connector as part of a waterfall




,

calculation, you must use the specific waterfall connec-tor (see Waterfall chart on the following page). Stan-

dard connectors (see Series connectors on the previouspage) are also available for a number of chart typesand should be used in preference to universal connec-tors when possible.

Legend

In menu: Chart

Menu item: A legend can be used to clearly identify the various dataseries or groups in a chart.

A floating toolbar containing a line style and a font con-trol (Text label property controls on page 33) appearswhen the legend is selected, letting you specify a linestyle for the legend box and the size of the legend text.In addition, chart-specific property controls for the series

and groups are available.

If you change the size of the legend’s frame the legendtext will be automatically reformatted to fit the new framesize. To create a horizontal legend for example pull theleft or right border of the frame outwards.



8. Waterfall chart


A waterfall chart (sometimes called bridge chart) visu-alizes an additive calculation with subtotals. To create awaterfall chart, simply type the calculation into the datasheet:

Positive values result in segments going upwards, nega-tive values create segments going downwards. Subtotals– i.e. segments that go all the way down to the baselineof the chart – are easily created with an e (for “equals”).

In fact, you can use e in any segment that you want tobe stretched to fit the rest of the chart. All e segmentsare calculated by think-cell and automatically kept up-to-date when data changes.

You can even begin the calculation with an e in the firstcolumn. In this case, think-cell starts from the right-mostcolumn and calculates backward to find the value for the e column. Thus, the following data sheet results in

the same chart as shown above:

Note: The value -42 in the final column indicates thatthe final segment is 42 units high, with the base-linereached by going 42 units downwards.

You may enter two or more values into a single column.If you have a column made up from more than one seg-ment, you can enter an e for at most one of them.

Waterfall chart 52



Due to the complexity of the waterfall chart concept, onlysimple charts can be created by using the data sheet

alone. If you notice that the chart does not build up theway you want it to, first finish typing in the data: It is easyto reconfigure the chart later with the mouse.

In a basic waterfall chart, every two columns are con-nected by precisely one horizontal connector. Whenselected, these connectors show two handles.

– Drag the connectors’ handles to change the waycolumns are connected in the waterfall.

– Remove a connector with£

¢

¡Delete , e.g., to start a new

summation or add a connector clicking Add Wa-

terfall Connector in the context menu.

Based on the initial example, in the following chart theconnector between the 1st and 2nd columns has beenremoved:

Whenever you drag a connector, the entire chart rear-ranges to accommodate the change and all “equals”columns are updated.

Also based on the previous example, in the followingchart an equals column has been added and both endsof the highlighted connector have been moved:

If connectors are conflicting with each other, skew con-nectors will result. Remove some of the skew connectorsto resolve the problem.

If all segments are connected properly and the chart isstill not grounded on the baseline the way you want it to,select the segment that should be grounded and forceit to the baseline with the or buttons.

For example, to create a build-up waterfall with the totalon the left, enter the following data into the sheet:

The resulting chart looks as follows:

Now drag the right handle of the highlighted connector to connect the “equals” column with the top of the lastsegment. This is the resulting chart:

Waterfall chart 53



If you want to create a build-down waterfall chart, usethe toolbar icon. The default data sheet is then filledwith values appropriate for a build-down waterfall. Apartfrom this, there is no difference between a build-up anda build-down waterfall chart in think-cell.

Waterfall charts can be decorated like column charts.

You can decorate axes, add arrows, change gaps, etc.(see Scales and axes on page 40 and Arrows and valueson page 45)

The segment labels in waterfall charts by default showthe extent of the segment which is always a positivevalue. Negative values in the data sheet are representedvisually by downward-going segments. However, youcan set the number format to always show signed num-bers (see Number format on page 33). In this case the

sign in the data sheet will also be shown in the segmentlabel.

Percent of datasheet 100%= label content

Labels for segment difference arrows (see Segment dif-ference arrow on page 46) in waterfall charts addition-ally support the display of values as percentages of the100%= value in the data sheet (% of datasheet 100%=).

Selecting % as the label content for a segment differencearrow label in a waterfall chart displays the differencebetween the start and end of the arrow, taking the start-ing point of the arrow to be 100%. In contrast, select-ing the % of datasheet 100%= label content displays thesame difference but takes the 100%= value of the col-umn pointed from by the start of the arrow to be 100%.

The above charts illustrate the two settings for the labelcontent. In the left diagram, the difference of 2 is com-pared to the starting value of 2, resulting in the display of +100%. When the 100%= value in the data sheet is leftempty it is taken to be the sum of the column. Therefore,in the right diagram, the difference of 2 is compared tothe column sum of 3, resulting in the display of +67%.

Another application is illustrated by the following chart.For the central column the waterfall total of 5 was setas the 100%= value in the data sheet. Using the % of

datasheet 100%= setting it is possible to show that theupper two segments correspond to 40% of this total.



9. Mekko chart

A Mekko chart (sometimes also called marimekko chart)is a two-dimensional stacked chart. In addition to thevarying segment heights of a regular stacked chart, aMekko chart also has varying column widths.

Column widths are scaled such that the total widthmatches the desired chart width. To preserve the visualrelationship between widths of different columns, thereare no gaps between columns in a Mekko chart.

In fact, the baseline of a Mekko chart is a fully fledgedvalue axis. You can select it with the mouse, and youcan use its context menu to add tickmarks, tickmark la-bels and an axis title (see Value axis on page 40). If youhave enabled tickmarks for the baseline, you can use thefloating toolbar of the axis to switch between absoluteand percentage values.

A Mekko chart can also be decorated with some of the

features described in Scales and axes on page 40 and Arrows and values on page 45. The labels of the Mekkochart support the label content property, which lets youchoose whether you want to display absolute values,percentages, or both (Label content on page 34).

Mekko chart with %-axis


A Mekko chart with %-axis (sometimes also calledmarimekko chart or 100% cost curve) is a two-dimensional 100% chart. As in the 100% chart, thevalue axis is based on percentages and column heightsare shown relative to 100%. In the regular 100% chart,since the columns are scaled to relative heights, thereis no visual representation of absolute column totals.

The Mekko chart with %-axis extends the 100% chartand uses variable column widths to represent columntotals. Thus, the segment area is proportional to the ab-solute value of the segments. As in the 100% chart, by

Mekko chart 55



default the data sheet takes percentages and the 100%-equivalent values are entered explicitly in the row la-

beled Width. As an example, the above Mekko chart isrendered from the following data sheet:

Alternatively, you can also enter absolute values into thedata sheet. In this case, for all columns that add up to100%, you can leave the Width row empty. For detailsabout entering relative or absolute values refer to Abso-lute and relative values on page 27.

Mekko chart with units


A Mekko chart with units (sometimes also called subma-rine chart or olympic chart) is a two-dimensional stackedchart. As in the regular stacked chart, the value axis andthe data sheet of this chart are based on absolute val-ues.

Width and height are controlled completely indepen-dently. Column widths are entered in the Width row on

top and individual segment heights are entered as in aregular stacked chart.

Ridge

In menu: Chart

Menu item:

You can highlight the outline of the Mekko chart: Clickthe Ridge button to add or remove a bold ridge.



10. Pie chart


A pie chart is actually a special case of a 100% chartwith only one category (column) of data.

Each segment of a pie chart shows three handles, whenselected. Each of the handles can be dragged with themouse to rotate the pie. When rotating, the handlessnap at positions 0◦, 90◦, 180◦ and 270◦, making iteasy to create an aesthetically pleasing layout.

The pie chart remembers which handle you were drag-ging when rotating the chart and preserves the correct

orientation even when the data is changed. In addition,you can drag the handles away from the pie in order toexplode the respective pie segment.

The labels of the pie chart support the label contentproperty, which lets you choose if you want to display

absolute values, percentages, or both (Label content onpage 34). Additionally you can move each outside labelto place it anywhere on the outer edge of the respectivesegment.

Universal connectors can be used to connect pie chartswith other chart types (see Universal connectors onpage 49).



11. Scatter and bubble charts

Scatter charts and bubble charts are similar in many as-pects, both using an xy-plot to visualize data sheet con-tents. The charts differ, however, in the style of markersused for the individual data points.

The data sheet for a scatter chart is organized as follows,with each row representing a single data point:

The data sheet for a bubble chart contains values in theSize column, but is otherwise organized identically:

The Group column in the data sheet can be used to or-

ganize individual data points into groups. In the abovescatter chart data sheet, the first three data points be-long to group A while the remaining data points belongto group B. Multiple data points belonging to the samegroup can be easily selected by clicking on a data pointand then moving the mouse pointer while holding downthe

£

¢

¡Shift ⇑ key (see Multi-selection on page 23).

Also the axes of scatter charts and bubble charts can be

adjusted. Please refer to Scales and axes on page 40for details. You may also use dates for the X or Y values.When all cells in the data sheet for one axis containdates and Excel’s cell format is set to Date, then the tick-mark labels of this axis show dates and you can formatthem accordingly (see Date format control on page 71).

Scatter and bubble charts 58



Labels

In both chart types, up to two labels can be associatedwith each data point. Labels can be added using the Add Label button and removed using the Remove

Labels button. The label content control lets you selectthe format of the text field for each label, allowing thedisplay of the label text as well as the x, y and size values(see Label content on page 34). By default, labels aredisabled in charts containing more than 50 data points.If required, they can be enabled using the context menu.

The automatic labeler places labels as close to their datapoints as possible, using connecting lines if necessary(see Automatic label placement on page 31). The la-beler starts as soon as the data sheet is closed, restartingwhen data values, labels or sizes are changed.

While the labeler is busy calculating the label place-ments, a rotating progress icon appears in the up-

per left corner of the chart and the concerned chart is

highlighted with a light gray frame. You can save the fileor continue to work on other charts or slides while thelabeler is running.

In rare circumstances the labeler may not find an opti-mal placement for all labels. When this happens, man-ually placing labels will help. Try to manually place oneof the poorly placed labels and let the labeler automat-ically place the remaining labels. An acceptable place-

ment for all labels can normally be achieved by manu-ally placing only a few problematic labels.

Scatter chart


The scatter chart uses the marker scheme control to con-sistently mark data points belonging to the same group(see Marker scheme on page 26). The marker shape

control can be used to set the marker shape for individ-ual data points (see Marker shape on page 26).1

If you choose No Markers in the marker scheme con-trol, the markers for the data points are switched off. Inthis case the labels are centered on the position of thedata points. However, the automatic label placementmay offset the labels from this position to prevent over-lap.

It is not possible to both switch off the marker and hidethe label for a data point.

1 As a former MS Graph user you might be used to using a scatter chart with lines to render a line chart with a valueaxis. In think-cell, a value axis is directly supported by theline chart. Please refer to Line chart on page 37 for details.




Bubble chart


The bubble chart is a variant of the scatter chart, withdata points marked by circles. The circle sizes are de-termined by the values in the Size column, with a fixedsize used for the largest circle. By default, the Size value

is proportional to the area of the circle. The Make

Diameter Represent Size button in the context menu canbe used to set the Size value to be proportional to thediameter of each circle.

To enable a legend of the bubble size, click Add Bub-

ble Size Legend in the chart’s context menu.

When two bubbles overlap, the smaller bubble will beshown in front of the larger one. To change the order,choose Bring to Front from a bubble’s context menu.

Trendline and partition

In menu: Chart, data point

Menu item:

Trendline

In scatter or bubble charts you can let think-cell calcu-

late a trend line for a group of values. A trendline is agraphical representation of trends in the group. They areused for the study of problems of prediction, also calledregression analysis.

The trendline is calculated using linear regression so thatthe sum over all points of the quadratic difference be-tween the Y coordinate and the trendline value at the X coordinate is minimized. In a bubble chart, the bubble

size is not used when calculating the trendline position.There are two ways to add a trendline to the chart:

– Right-click a marker or a bubble of the desired groupand select Add Trendline from the context menu.

– Select a partition line (see Partition on the followingpage). In the toolbar you can choose a group of val-ues and the line is changed to a trendline for thisgroup.

You can change the background color on one side of theline and move the line in the same way as for a partition




line (see Partition on the current page). However, onceyou have moved the line, it will no longer be calculated

from the values in the data sheet.

Partition

You can add a partition line to scatter or bubble chartsto point up a partition of a set. To add a partition line,select Add Trendline/Partition from the chart’s contextmenu.

You can move the line by clicking on it and dragging it to

the desired position. It is also possible to select the par-tition line and then drag the handles at the beginning or end of the partition line. While dragging, the end pointswill snap to nice values. The spacing of the snap pointsdepends on your current zoom level. If you hold downthe

£

¢

¡Shift ⇑ key while dragging, the angle of the partition

line is constrained to the current angle or to that of avertical, horizontal or diagonal line.

To make a copy of a partition line, hold down the£

¢

¡Ctrl

key while dragging. This is an easy way to create parallellines, e.g. to mark a range of values.

You can change the background color of a set by click-ing on the partition line and selecting a backgroundcolor from the toolbar. To set the background color of the area on the other side of the line, right-click the par-tition line and select Flip Filled Side. You can also

simply double-click the partition line.

If you want to calculate the position and angle of theline based on the values in the chart, see Trendline onthe preceding page.



12. Project timeline (Gantt chart)


A project timeline (sometimes called Gantt chart) visu-alizes project activities. The scale of a project timelineis a calendar. The duration of activities is representedby bars or process arrows, whereas singular events are

represented by milestones.

Calendar scale

Naturally, in a project timeline the scale is based ondates. With think-cell, you can quickly change the vis-ible date range. The appearance of the scale is initiallyautomatic, but can be manually modified if needed.

Modifying the date range

When inserting a new project timeline, the calendar isinitially scaled to show some time before and some timeafter the current date. There are two ways to change thedate range that is shown.

You can open a calendar and select the dates you want:

– Double-click on a scale, e.g., the bar showingmonths, to open the calendar dialog.

– Alternatively click the Open Calendar button in the

chart menu.

Project timeline (Gantt chart) 62



– Today’s date is marked red.

– Select the desired start date with a single click, and

select the desired end date with another click whileholding down

£

¢

¡Shift ⇑. You may also just hold down the

mouse button and drag the mouse along to deter-mine a range. In the upper right corner you will findadditional information about the selected period.

– Alternatively, you can use the cursor keys£

¢

¡←

£

¢

¡→

£

¢

¡↑

£

¢

¡↓

and£

¢

¡Page up

£

¢

¡Page down to select a different date range.

To expand the range, hold down£

¢

¡Shift ⇑ while moving.

– To edit a date range you can grab its beginning or end and drag it to the desired date.

– To scroll the calendar one line at a time, use your mouse’s scroll wheel, click the scroll bar arrows, or drag the scroll bar handle. To scroll the calendar onepage at a time, click onto the scroll bar above or be-low the handle.

– To jump to an arbitrary date, select the desired month

and year using the controls in the window’s toolbar.You can simply type in the desired year, if you do notwant to use the control’s up/down buttons. The cal-endar immediately scrolls to the desired position.

– You can vertically resize the window to see moremonths at a time, and you can horizontally resize the

window to adjust the font size. The width of the win-dow does not have an impact on the calendar layout:

One line always represents precisely one month.– When you are done, simply return to the PowerPoint

slide by clicking the calendar window’s OK button or by clicking on the slide. The selected date range willthen be applied to the chart. If you want to discardyour selection and keep the current setting, click Can-

cel or press£

¢

¡Esc.

Alternatively, if you only need to adjust the beginning

or the end of the range, you can simply change thesevalues with the mouse:

1. Select a scale, e.g., the bar showing months.

2. Click and drag the handle that appears on the se-lected scale. The current date is displayed as a tooltipwhile you drag.

3. When you drop the handle, the chart is rearrangedto accommodate the new date range.

While dragging the handles, they snap to integral unitsof the selected scale. You can quickly expand the chartto cover a large date range by dragging the handles of a scale with large units (e.g., years or months).




Scale display

When changing the date range or thesize of a chart, some scales as wellas vertical separator lines may appear or disappear. Based on the range youselect, together with the chart size andfont size, think-cell suggests appropri-ate scales and separators to show. To make good useof this feature, you should first select the desired daterange before manually adding or removing scales or

separators. Altogether, there are five scales available in the projecttimeline chart: Years, quarters, months, weeks and days.In addition to showing or hiding scales, think-cell sup-ports several options to change the look of the calendar.

All of these settings are available in the menu Scales, lo-cated in the floating toolbar of the Gantt chart or oneof the currently visible scales.

The Scales menu offers the following options:– Using Scales..., show or hide each of the five avail-

able scales (years, quarters, months, weeks, days).Depending on the chart’s current size and date range,some scales may not be available because there is notenough room to show their units. Once you decidedto show a scale it will not hide again automatically,even when the chart’s size or date range is changed.

– Using Separators..., show or hide vertical separator lines for each of the available scales (years, quarters,months, weeks, days).

– Enable or disable Automatic Scales/Separators....When enabled, think-cell shows appropriate scalesand separators depending on the date range, chart

size and font size. Once you explicitly show or hide ascale or a scale’s vertical separator lines this option

is disabled. When you enable it again, think-cellreverts to the scales and separator lines shownautomatically.

– Enable or disable Workweek Only . When enabled,weekends are not shown in the chart.

– Enable or disable Weekend Shades. This option is onlyavailable if Workweek Only is disabled.

– Week Starts... lets you set the day that the think-cell

calendar will use as the start of week.

– Weekend...: Here you can choose the days that matchthe weekend in your country.

– Fit Scale to Data: The chart’s date range is adjustedsuch that all bars, milestones and brackets becomevisible.

Each scale supports various ways to display date infor-

mation, e.g., the months scale may show month nameslike “September” or numbers like “09”. You probablywant to choose the appropriate format depending onthe available space.

To do so, select the scale with themouse and use the floating tool-bar that appears to select the de-sired format. Since the dropdownmenu is actually a date format con-

trol (see Date format control on page 71), you can alsotype in arbitrary date format strings.

Note: As with other labels, you can add arbitrary textto the scale labels, such as footnote markers or shortcomments.


S l l b l d li

R (A ti iti )



Scale labels and separator lines

Each scale supports an optional label and optional sep-arator lines. To use these features, open the contextmenu for the desired scale with a right-click.

Note: Primary and secondary separator lines are auto-matically assigned different styles.

The scales’ context menu offers the following buttons:

Delete (Shortcut£

¢

¡Delete ) Delete the selected scale.

You can show the scale again using the Scales menufrom the toolbar. When you deleted a scale it will not

show again automatically, even when the chart sizeor date range is changed.

Open Calendar (Shortcut double-click) Open the

calendar dialog (refer to Modifying the date rangeon page 61).

Add Vertical Separator Lines Explicitly add or remove

vertical separator lines for the selected scale. You canalso remove separator lines by selecting them and

pressing the

£

¢

¡Delete key. The software automaticallyadds and removes these lines unless you are makingan explicit choice.

Add Scale Label Add descriptive text to the selected

scale. The label contains language-dependent pre-defined text which can be replaced as needed.

Rows (Activities)

A project timeline is made up of rows, each representinga certain activity that is named in the label to the left.The rows, in turn, contain timeline items such as bars,milestones and brackets.

You can explicitly select an entire row to change its look,add or remove labels, drag it to another location or use£

¢

¡Shift ⇑+

£

¢

¡ Alt and the cursor keys

£

¢

¡↑ and

£

¢

¡↓ to move it.

Note: There is a special row below the chart reservedfor the most important milestones. You cannot add bars

to this row, you cannot move it by drag-and-drop, andyou cannot delete it. Otherwise, it is just an additionalactivity row which is always there.

Adding and removing rows

To insert a new row, select an existing row and use theInsert Row button in the think-cell context menu. Al-

ternatively, press£

¢

¡ Alt +

£

¢

¡Insert . If all other rows are deleted,

there is still the extra row left at the very bottom of thechart which you can click to open the context menu andcreate new rows.

The keyboard shortcut£

¢

¡ Alt +

£

¢

¡Insert also inserts new rows

while editing labels, and the first label of the newly in-serted row is automatically selected. This way you can


dd d k t i ith t hi f th

Add R ibl L b l C l Add th



add rows and keep typing without reaching for themouse. Likewise, you can use

£

¢

¡ Alt and the cursor keys

£

¢

¡←

£

¢

¡→

£

¢

¡↑

£

¢

¡↓ to move the cursor across labels.You can also use the Delete button in the think-cell

context menu to delete an entire row. The keyboardshortcut for deletion is

£

¢

¡Delete .

Row features

Each row not only contains timeline items – bars, pro-cess arrows, milestones, brackets – but can also haveup to three labels, a horizontal separator line, and rowshading. The labels and decorations are added and re-moved using the think-cell context menu. To open themenu, move the mouse outside of the chart’s date rangearea and right-click on a row when it highlights.

Note: When you right-click a row inside the chart’sdate range area, another menu opens that allows for insertion of new timeline items. Refer to Adding items

on page 68 for more information.The row’s context menu offers the following buttons. Youcan apply all of these buttons to one or multiple selectedrows:

Delete (Shortcut£

¢

¡Delete ) Delete the selected row.

Insert Row (Shortcut£

¢

¡ Alt +

£

¢

¡Insert ) Insert a new row after

the selected one. If the selected row is the one below

the chart’s bottom line, the new row is inserted before. Add Activity Label Column (Shortcut

£

¢

¡F2 ) Add or

remove the activity label column. A headline for thecolumn is added which you can overwrite or removeif necessary. With

£

¢

¡F2 you can edit the selected row’s

activity label.

Add Responsible Label Column Add or remove the

responsibility label column. A headline for the col-

umn is added which you can overwrite or remove if necessary.

Add Remark Label Column Add or remove the

remark label column. A headline for the columnis added which you can overwrite or remove if necessary.

Add Row Shade Add or remove shading. You can

change the shading’s color and also add or remove

the shading using the fill control in the think-cell tool-bar. Shading works also well for multiple successiverows.

Add Row Separator Add or remove a separator line

above the selected row.

Row labels

Each row supports up to three labels, resulting in up tothree text columns next to the actual timeline. The de-fault headlines for the three columns are language de-pendent (see Language dependency on page 71), with“Activity”, “Responsible” and “Remark” used as the de-fault English headlines. You are free to overwrite or re-move them if necessary.

The labels to the left are intended for names of activi-ties. These labels are shown by default and each label

belongs to exactly one row. If you already have the textfor the labels available in some other place, you canquickly copy-paste an entire label column (see Pastingtext into multiple labels on page 35).

You can add up to two more columns if required. Thelabels for the headlines are automatically added when a


column is created The labels in the additional columns

To remove a label use its context menu or simply delete



column is created. The labels in the additional columnscan refer to multiple rows (see Labels spanning multiple

rows on the following page).Initially, a newly created label column is empty exceptfor its headline. Move the mouse over the label columnto discover label placeholders, which you can select justas any other features in think-cell. Use the placeholder’scontext menu to create either a text label, or a check-box, or a Harvey ball. To quickly create a text label, youcan simply select a placeholder and start typing. Simi-larly, you can recreate the headline labels, if you deletedthem.

The row label’s context menu shows the following but-tons:

Delete (Shortcut£

¢

¡Delete ) Delete the selected label.

Switch to Checkbox Use a checkbox instead of a text

label. If the selected label already contains text, thetext will be discarded.

Switch to Harvey ball Use a Harvey ball instead of a

text label. If the selected label already contains text,the text will be discarded.

Switch to Text Label (Shortcut£

¢

¡F2 or start typing) Use

text for this label. Select and overwrite the placeholder text that is inserted when you click this button.

Add Bracket Add or remove the selected label’s

bracket. Brackets are added automatically to labelsthat span more than one row (see Labels spanningmultiple rows on the next page). This option onlyapplies to responsibility and remark labels. Since

Activity labels always refer to precisely one row, theselabels do not need brackets.

To remove a label, use its context menu or simply deleteall text from the label – it will then disappear. To remove

multiple labels at a time, it is often convenient to selectall desired labels using the mouse together with

£

¢

¡Shift ⇑

or £

¢

¡Ctrl keys (see also Multi-selection on page 23). Then,

choose the delete option from the context menu, or pressthe

£

¢

¡Delete key to remove all selected labels.

Checkbox and Harvey ball

In both responsibility and remark columns, you can

choose to display a checkbox or a Harvey ball insteadof a text label. Select the feature to configure its ap-pearance using the think-cell toolbar. Use the font sizecontrol (see Font on page 33) to adjust the size of thefeature, and use the color control to change its primaryor outline color (see Color and fill on page 24). For checkboxes, you can also change the style of the out-line (see Line style on page 25).

When you select a checkbox, an additional control be-comes available in the toolbar, which you can use tochange the checkmark symbol. You can also quicklychange the symbol by double-clicking the checkbox, or by pressing the associated key on your keyboard; e.g.,£

¢

¡v for “check” or

£

¢

¡x for “cross”.


When you select a Harvey ball, an ad-



y y ,ditional control becomes available in the

toolbar, which you can use to change theHarvey ball’s completion state. You canalso quickly increase the Harvey ball’s stateby double-clicking it or pressing

£

¢

¡+ on your

keyboard and decrease the Harvey ball’s state by press-ing

£

¢

¡- on your keyboard. Additionally, you can directly

set the number of completed Harvey ball segments byentering it with the keyboard. If the number of segmentsis larger than 9, use the keys

£

¢

¡1 to

£

¢

¡8 to fill one eighth of

all segments or two eighths, three eighths and so forth.Next to the control you willfind another control with num-bers. These numbers indicatethe number of segments of theHarvey ball. You can manuallyadd your own values by entering them in the box.

Labels spanning multiple rows

In both responsibility and remark columns, each labelcan refer to more than one activity. Drag the handlesthat appear next to the label when you select it, to de-termine the activities it refers to. You can only drag alabel’s handles across rows that do not already havea label in the same column, and you cannot drag thehandles across horizontal separators.

A bracket will automatically appear as soon as a labelspans more than one row. In this case, you are free to

remove the bracket by selecting it and pressing£¢

¡

Delete , or via the bracket’s or the label’s context menu.

Timeline items

There are several types of items used in a project timelineto visualize periods of time and events. The followingitems are supported by think-cell:

– Bars show the duration of some activity.– Process arrows are similar to bars but contain text.

They grow and shrink vertically with the amount of text they contain. To create an aesthetically pleasinglayout, all process arrows of a Gantt chart are resizedto the same height, if possible.


– Milestones mark singular events.



Milestones mark singular events.

– Brackets are used to label periods of time which typ-

ically comprise multiple activity bars.

– Shades are used to visualize non-working times suchas weekends or holidays. They are usually labeled byan additional bracket below the chart.

Adding items

To add an item to the chart, move the mouse acrossthe chart’s date range area. A crosshair helps you totrack the row and date you are pointing at, and a tooltipprovides precise date information.

The dates that can be selected depend on the chart’sdate range and size, and on your current zoom level.If days are too small to be pointed at individually, thecrosshair snaps to firsts of weeks and firsts of months. If even weeks are too small to be distinctively selected, thecrosshair only snaps to the beginning of months.

Wherever the crosshair appears, it is possible to inserta new item. When you move the mouse over existingitems, the crosshair disappears and the tooltip reflectsthat item’s date or date span.

With the crosshair highlighting, click the right mousebutton to open the context menu.

Note: If you want to open the row’s context menu toinsert a new row or to add some row label or decoration,you must right-click on the row outside the chart’s daterange area. Refer to Row features on page 65 for more

information.

The context menu for insertion shows the following but-tons:

Delete (Shortcut£

¢

¡Delete ) Delete the selected row,

separator line, or milestone line.

New Bar Create a new activity bar beginning at the

crosshair position.

New Milestone Create a new milestone at thecrosshair position.

New Bracket Create a new bracket beginning at the

crosshair position.

New Shade Create a new shade beginning at the

crosshair position.

New Process Create a new process arrow beginning

at the crosshair position.Note: You can also create new items by clicking anddragging existing items while holding down the

£

¢

¡Ctrl key.

A copy of the original item is created at the new loca-tion.


Moving items to the end of a bar, for example, will ensure that the



g

There are several ways to move existing items to an-other date or row. Obviously, you can drag one or mul-tiple selected (Multi-selection on page 23) items with themouse. If exactly one item is selected, you can also dragits handle(s) to adjust the date, or anchor it to another item (see Anchoring items on this page). You can alsoselect an entire row in order to see all handles of therow’s items.

You may double-click an item to open the calendar dialog

for easy date selection. The current date of the selecteditem is pre-selected. For bars, process arrows, brack-ets and shades, select a date range as described above(Modifying the date range on page 61). For milestones,simply click on the desired date; the calendar dialog willclose immediately and the selected date will be applied.

Milestone positioning

Bars and process arrows are positioned to begin at0:00h on the start date and to finish at 24:00h on theend date. The default position of milestones, however,depends on the currently viewed date range and the vis-ible scales:

– If the day scale or the vertical day separator lines arevisible, then milestones are positioned at 12:00h onthe appropriate day;

– If the day scale and the vertical day separator lines arenot visible, then milestones are positioned at 0:00hon the appropriate day.

The default positioning of milestones is usually correctbut can be overridden, if required, by the use of anchors( Anchoring items on this page). Anchoring a milestone

, p ,milestone is always aligned with the end of the bar, re-

gardless of the currently viewed data range or visiblescales.

Anchoring items

Using the handles of bars, process arrows, milestones,brackets and shades, you can attach these items to other items. When you click a handle with the mouse, theavailable anchors highlight. Drag the handle within the

current row to set the selected item’s date manually, or drag the handle onto an anchor of some other item toattach it to that item.

Items remain anchored while they are being edited. For instance, when you anchor a milestone to the end of abar, this connection enforces that the milestone is alwaysat the same date as the end of that bar. In particular,whenever you move the bar afterwards, the location of the milestone will be updated accordingly.


For another example, inserting a shade implicitly creates

label’s item, or create it if it does not yet exist. By de-



an additional bracket which is anchored to the shade.

When you move the shade, the attached bracket movesalong. Still, you can detach the bracket, move it to adifferent location, or delete it.

Note: Items can be anchored across different rows.When you drag an item’s handle, the date changes butthe item remains in its row. To move an item to a differentrow, drag the item itself, not its handles.

Changing the chart’s appearanceYou can change the color of bars, process arrows, mile-stones and shades using the color control in the floatingtoolbar (Color and fill on page 24). The backgroundcolor of the chart can be changed by selecting the wholechart and choosing the desired color from the floatingtoolbar.

By way of the context menu, you can further configure

the appearance of timeline items. The context menu for timeline items comprises the following buttons (depend-ing on the type of the selected item):

Delete (Shortcut£

¢

¡Delete ) Delete the selected item.

Open Calendar (Shortcut double-click) Open the

calendar dialog for the selected item (refer to Movingitems on the preceding page).

Set Solid/Dashed Toggle the appearance of the

selected bar or process arrow between solid anddashed.

Add Date Label (Shortcut£

¢

¡F2 ) Add or remove a label

for the selected item. By pressing£

¢

¡F2 , you can edit the

fault, the label contains the item’s date which is up-

dated when the item moves (see also Item labels onthe current page).

Set Diamond/Triangle Shape Toggle the shape of the

selected milestone between triangle and diamond.

Add Milestone Line Add a milestone line to the se-

lected milestone.

Item labels

Bars, process arrows, milestones and brackets can havelabels, while shades are usually labeled by means of anadditional bracket below the shade. Use the think-cellcontext menu to add a label to one or more selecteditems. If exactly one item is selected, you can press

£

¢

¡F2 to

add a label to this item or edit an existing label.

By default, an item label contains the item’s date or datespan. This information is maintained in a text field (see

Text fields on page 32) and is updated whenever theitem is moved. You can add text to the label or replacethe default content with custom text.

If you deleted the text field you can alwaysre-insert it into the label. Select the label andchoose the desired field from the label con-tent control in the context-sensitive toolbar (refer to Labelcontent on page 34).

In particular, think-cell allows for large multi-line labelseven in a relatively dense chart. All activities are auto-matically arranged to make the text fit. Moreover, mostlabels can be dragged to place themselves below or be-sides their respective item.


You can mix the format codes with arbitrary text



Date format control

You can freely set the desired formattingfor date values that appear throughoutthe labels of a project timeline. By con-vention, all item labels of a chart sharethe same date formatting, so when you

change the formatting for one label, allothers will change correspondingly.

When you select a label that contains a date field,or select a date field within a label, the date formatcontrol appears in the floating toolbar. It works similar to the number format control (see Number format onpage 33).

The dropdown menu facilitates one-click selection of themost commonly used date formats. Its contents dependson the feature that is selected, e.g., each scale offers adifferent set of predefined date formats.

The edit box reflects the current setting and allows enter-ing of arbitrary date formatting. The format codes usedby Excel and Graph are supported, and some morecodes were added for the particular purposes of theproject timeline (see table below). Also, up to four of

your most recently used custom formattings are avail-able in the dropdown box.

Date format codes are case-insensitive. You can inserta line break with the backslash character \.

and delimiters. If your custom text contains charac-

ters that can be interpreted as format codes, i.e.,d D w W m M q Q y Y \, you must enclose the textwithin single quotes '. It will then be displayed “as is”.To use the single quote character itself, type two singlequotes ''.

Language dependency

The project timeline chart is language dependent: The

display of full or abbreviated month names, as well asnames for weekdays, the default headlines for the activ-ity labels and the default text for scale labels, depend onthe default PowerPoint language setting for Office 2003and earlier or the proofing language setting for Office2007 and later. This setting’s value is used at the timewhen the elements are inserted.

You can alter the language used for language depen-dent elements as follows:

1. Alter the setting to the desired language by

a) clicking into a text box,

b) double-clicking the current language in the sta-tus bar for Office 2003 and earlier or choosingReview > Language > Set Proofing Language... inOffice 2007 and later,

c) selecting the desired language in the dialog,

d) clicking on Default... and confirming with Yes,

e) closing the dialog with OK .

2. Use the appropriate context menu to remove andthen re-add the language dependent labels that youwish to update.


3. Use the Scales menu to first hide and then re-showh l h i h d



the scales that you wish to update.

Date format codes

Code Description Example

d day of month 5

dd day of month (two-digit) 05

ddd day of week (abbrev.) Mon

dddd day of week (full) Monday

ddddd day of week (single character) Mw week of year 7

ww week of year (two-digit) 07

M month number 9

MM month number (two-digit) 09

MMM month name (abbrev.) Sep

MMMM month name (full) September

MMMMM month name (single character) S

q quarter (decimal number) 4

qq quarter (upper-case romannumber)

IV

qqq quarter (lower-case romannumber)

iv

yy year (two-digit) 04

yyyy year (four-digit) 2004

\ (Backslash) line break, e.g., ddd\dd Mon

05'...' Insert custom text, e.g.,

'Quarter' qq Quarter IV

'' The actual single quotecharacter, e.g., 'W'ww''yy

W07’04

13. Customizing think-cell



This chapter describes how to customize think-cell, i.e.,how to change default colors and other default proper-ties.

The first sections describe creating and loading a stylefile and explain how to deploy it in an organization. Anunderstanding of these tasks is required in any case. Af-terwards, you may either follow one of the Style file tu-torials on page 78 to create your own style file or gothrough the format reference in Style file format on thefollowing page.

Creating a think-cell style

A think-cell style file is created in an XML editor. Youshould use a dedicated XML editor for authoring think-cell style files. We recommend Microsoft Visual Studiofor this purpose. It seems to be a heavy package for such a simple task, but as it turns out, the task is notso simple after all and Visual Studio offers the best XMLediting experience we have seen to date. If you alreadyhave Visual Studio installed, any version will do. If youdo not yet have Visual Studio installed, simply choose thelightest available package, which is Visual Studio Express

2012 for Web:

http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/downloads

With Visual Studio installed, simply open the XML fileand Visual Studio will retrieve the associated syntax def-inition (“XML Schema”) from our webserver. It does soautomatically and in the background, you do not haveto care or even know about it. It will then highlight errorsin your document, and with Ctrl-Spacebar you can trig-ger auto completion: Visual Studio will offer a choice of tags, attributes or values applicable to the current con-text (position of the text cursor). If you move the mouseover highlighted errors, you will get a tooltip with a de-tailed explanation of the error. The same informationis also available in the Error List window (regardless of where your mouse pointer is). To show it, go to View >

Error List.

Of course, any other editor that supports XML alsoworks. The file needs to be saved with an .xml exten-

sion.

Loading style files

To load a style file, choose Load Style File... from themenu More. In the dialog, navigate to the folder with

Customizing think-cell 74

the style file, choose the file and click Open. It is usedfor any new charts If you want to apply the style’s colors

When changing an existing style file, you may wantto use XML elements or attributes that require a more

http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/downloads



for any new charts. If you want to apply the style s colors

or color schemes in existing charts, you need to do somanually.

Deploying think-cell styles

Load Style File... loads a style file into the master slide of the current presentation. When the presentation is dis-tributed as a PowerPoint template, the think-cell style isimplicitly distributed as well. It should not be necessary

to give a think-cell style file to individual users. Switch-ing between styles is accomplished by switching betweenPowerPoint templates.

Style file format

think-cell style files are XML files conforming to theschema

http://schemas.think-cell.com/xxxxx/style.xsd

where xxxxx is a think-cell build number. Only thisor a higher build will be compatible with the syn-tax used in the style file. The following elements arerecognized:

style

Available since build number 22060. The style el-

ement is the root element of a style file. The manda-tory attribute name sets the name that is shown in theMore menu as the currently active style. The attributesxmlns, xmlns:xsi and xsi:schemaLocation should notbe changed from the example when creating a newstyle file.

to use XML elements or attributes that require a more

recent think-cell build. In that case, you also need toupdate the build number in the attributesxmlns andxsi:schemaLocation.

For example, the element srgbcolor has been avail-able since build number 22060, while sdrgbClr re-quires 22065. If you make use of the latter to definecolors using decimal numbers for the red, green andblue values, you need to use 22065 in the xmlns and

xsi:schemaLocation attributes.

Example

<style name="Example style name"xmlns="http://schemas.think-cell.com/22065/style"xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"xsi:schemaLocation="http://schemas.think-cell.com/22065/stylehttp://schemas.think-cell.com/22060/style.xsd">...</style>

fillLst

Available since build number 22060. A list of fills,described by multiple instances of the elementsnoFill or solidFill. The fills defined in this list areshown in the color control of the floating toolbar (see Color and fill on page 24).

Example

<fillLst><solidFill ...

</fillLst>


noFill

A l bl b ld b 6 Wh h

Example

http://schemas.think-cell.com/xxxxx/style.xsd



Available since build number 22060. When the user

chooses this special fill from the color control, e.g.,for a segment, the segment has no fill color. Theattribute name contains the name used in the color control.

Example

<noFill name="No Fill"/>

solidFill Available since build number 22060. A fill based ona single color. The color can be specified using ei-ther one of the child elements schemeClr or srgbClr.The attribute name contains the name shown in thecolor list.

Alternatively, you can use the special name values

bg1, tx1, accent1, accent2, hlink, folHlink, bg2or tx2. These correspond to specific PowerPointscheme colors and think-cell will then use the namethat appears in PowerPoint’s scheme colors dialog,depending on the version of PowerPoint and theuser interface language.

Example

<solidFill name="White"><srgbClr val="FFFFFF"/></solidFill>

separator

Available since build number 22060. A horizontalline in the color list.

<separator/>

schemeClr

Available since build number 22060. A fill basedon one of PowerPoint’s built-in scheme colors. Theattribute val specifies the color using the values bg1,tx1, accent1, accent2, hlink, folHlink, bg2 or tx2.

Example

<solidFill name="accent2"><schemeClr val="accent2"/>

</solidFill>

srgbClr

Available since build number 22060. A fill basedon a color defined using values for the red, greenand blue components. The attribute val contains six

hexadecimal characters for the three components.

Example

<srgbClr val="FF00FF"/>

sdrgbClr

Available since build number 22065. A fill basedon a color defined using values for the red, greenand blue components. The attributes r, g and b eachcontain numbers between 0 and 255.


Example

d bCl "0" "255" b "0"/

fillSchemeLst

Available since build number 22060 A list of think



<sdrgbClr r="0" g="255" b="0"/>

scrgbClr

Available since build number 22065. A fill basedon a color defined using values for the red, greenand blue components. The attributes r, g and b eachcontain percentage values between 0% and 100%.The percentage values may use integers or decimalnumbers with 2 decimal places and a dot as the

separator.

Example

<sdrgbClr r="0%" g="100%" b="66.66%"/>

prstClr

Available since build number 22065. A fill based

on one the preset colors defined in the Office Open XML standard. The attribute val specifies the color name and must be one of the names from AliceBlueto YellowGreen enumerated in

ms dn .m ic ro so ft .c om /e n- us /l ib ra ry /documentformat.openxml.drawing.presetcolorvalues.aspx

or in section 20.1.10.47 of the Office Open XMLstandard.

Example

<prstClr val="white"/>

Available since build number 22060. A list of think-

cell color schemes that will be used in the color scheme control of the floating toolbar (see Color scheme on page 25). Individual fill schemes are de-fined using the fillScheme child element.

Example<fillSchemeLst>

<fillScheme name="Company scheme">.. .

</fillSchemeLst>

fillScheme

Available since build number 22060. A color scheme consisting of a sequence of fills. It isdefined by referencing fills using the child elementfillRef. The attribute name contains the name thatis used in the color scheme control.

If the optional boolean attribute reverse is set to 1,the list of fills will be applied in reverse order, start-ing with the first fill for the bottom-most series, thesecond fill for the series above, and so on.

Example<fillScheme name="Company scheme" reverse="0">

<fillRef name="White"/>.. .

</fillScheme>

fillRef

Available since build number 22060. A referenceto a fill defined in the fillLst element. The attributename must match the value of same attribute in thefill definition.


Example

<fillRef name="White"/>

Example

<fillSchemeRefDefaultWaterfall



<fillRef name="White"/>

fillSchemeRefDefault

Available since build number 22060. A reference toa fill scheme that is used as the default color schemefor all chart types. If one or several of the elements

fillSchemeRefDefaultStacked,fillSchemeRefDefaultWaterfall,fillSchemeRefDefaultClustered,fillSchemeRefDefaultMekko,

fillSchemeRefDefaultArea,fillSchemeRefDefaultPie,fillSchemeRefDefaultBubble

are used, they override the default scheme set herefor the corresponding specific chart type. If all of these elements are used, the fillSchemeRefDefault

may be omitted.

Example<fillSchemeRefDefault name="Company scheme"/>

fillSchemeRefDefaultStacked

Available since build number 22060. The defaultcolor scheme for stacked charts.

Example

<fillSchemeRefDefaultStacked name="Stacked scheme"/>

fillSchemeRefDefaultWaterfall

Available since build number 22060. The defaultcolor scheme for waterfall charts.

<fillSchemeRefDefaultWaterfall

name="Waterfall scheme"/>

fillSchemeRefDefaultClustered

Available since build number 22060. The defaultcolor scheme for clustered charts.

Example

<fillSchemeRefDefaultClustered

name="Clustered scheme"/>

fillSchemeRefDefaultMekko

Available since build number 22060. The defaultcolor scheme for mekko charts.

Example

<fillSchemeRefDefaultMekko name="Mekko scheme"/>

fillSchemeRefDefaultArea

Available since build number 22060. The defaultcolor scheme for area charts.

Example

<fillSchemeRefDefaultArea name="Area scheme"/>

fillSchemeRefDefaultPie

Available since build number 22060. The defaultcolor scheme for pie charts.


Example

<fillSchemeRefDefaultPie name="Pie scheme"/>

How to modify think-cell’s default style

In think cell’s installation directory (usually



<fillSchemeRefDefaultPie name Pie scheme />

fillSchemeRefDefaultBubble

Available since build number 22060. The defaultcolor scheme for bubble charts.

Example

<fillSchemeRefDefaultBubble name="Bubble scheme"/>

noStyle

Available since build number 22060. If a style fileonly contains this element, loading it will remove thecurrent style information from the master slide.

Example

<noStylexmlns="http://schemas.think-cell.com/22065/style"xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"xsi:schemaLocation="http://schemas.think-cell.com/22065/stylehttp://schemas.think-cell.com/22065/style.xsd"/>

Style file tutorials

One of the following situations might apply to you:

– You are generally happy with think-cell’s color palette and color schemes, but wish to add some

of your own colors or remove unneeded ones. SeeHow to modify think-cell’s default style on the cur-rent page.

In think-cell s installation directory (usuallyC:\Program Files\think-cell), in the subdi-rectory styles, you can find the style fileexample_style_default.xml. This style mirrorsthe colors and color schemes that are availableimmediately after installation when no style isloaded. Therefore,

1. Make a copy of example_style_default.xml and

load it into an XML editor (see Creating a think-cell style on page 73 for choosing a suitable edi-tor).

2. Walk through the file from top to bottom makingthe changes described in the following steps.

3. Remove any unneeded colors from the list in-side the fillLst element. You will find solidFill,pattFill and separator elements corresponding

to the items in the color list displayed in think-cell(see Color and fill on page 24). To remove, e.g.,a solidFill element, remove everything betweenand including the opening tag <solidFill ...>

and the closing tag </solidFill>.

4. Optionally, create a new section for your owncolors. To do this, insert a separator tag by writ-ing <separator/> at the appropriate location inthe color list. Also, feel free to use line breaks,indentation and empty lines to structure the XMLcode in the style file for your own convenience.Spaces and linebreaks have no effect on the re-sulting style.


5. Add your own colors using the solidFill ele-ment. Your color needs a name and values for the

Note that you can only use colors that have beendefined in the fillLst section (see steps 3.-5.)



red, green and blue channels. You should havethese values from the specification document for your company’s corporate identity. If the color’sname should be “Light Green”, the decimal valuefor the red channel 170, for green 255 and for blue42, then it should look like this:

<solidFill name="Light Green"><sdrgbClr r="170" g="255" b="42"/>

</solidFill>

6. Remove any unneeded color schemes from thelist inside the fillSchemeLst element. You will findfillScheme elements corresponding to the itemsin the color scheme list displayed in think-cell(see Color scheme on page 25). To remove afillScheme element, remove everything betweenand including the opening tag <fillScheme ...>

and the closing tag </fillScheme>.7. Optionally, modify an existing color scheme. You

can

– remove one or multiple colors from the schemeby removing the respective fillRef elements or

– reorder the existing colors by reorderingfillRef elements or

– include one of your own colors by adding afillRef element inside the fillScheme elementat the appropriate place. If you wish to includethe color defined above, add the following line:

<fillRef name="Light Green"/>

above. In particular, if you removed any colorsin step 3., you must remove those colors from thecolor schemes, too.

8. Optionally, create a new color scheme using thefillScheme element. Your scheme needs a name,e.g., “Green Scheme”, and a list of color refer-ences as fillRef elements. If you had defined thecolors “Dark Green” and “Medium Green” in ad-

dition to “Light Green” above, your color schememight look like this:

<fillScheme name="Green Scheme"><fillRef name="Dark Green"/><fillRef name="Medium Green"/><fillRef name="Light Green"/>

</fillScheme>

9. Check the contents of the fillSchemeRefDefault

element. The name attribute specifies the color

scheme that is used by default when inserting newcharts. If you wish to set your own color schemeas the new default, modify the code like this:

<fillSchemeRefDefault name="Green scheme"/>

10. Save the modified style file, load it (see Loadingstyle files on page 73) and test it.

11. Deploy the new style in your organization as

described in Loading style files on page 73. Inparticular, it is not necessary tp send the XML fileto your colleagues, but you should of course keepit for your own reference.

14. Excel data links



When the source data for your data-driven chartsis available in Excel, you can create charts di-rectly from the Excel application. When data inExcel changes, you can either update the chartson command or have think-cell do the updateautomatically.

Creating a chart from Excel

For a step-by-step guide on how to create a chartfrom your Excel data using think-cell, please con-sider the example from Introduction to think-cell onpage 14. This is how the example chart data looksin Excel:

To create a chart from Excel, select the desired datarange in your Excel workbook, including series andcategory labels:

The layout of your data must match the layout of think-cell’s internal data sheet: Column charts areusually created from data columns, whereas bar charts are created from data rows. Nevertheless itis possible to transpose the data source (see Trans-posing linked data on the following page). In addi-tion to the data, some cells to the left and on topare reserved for category and series labels.1

Then select the desired chart type from the Charts

menu in Excel’s think-cell toolbar:

1 If you are unsure about the exact layout required, simplyinsert a new chart of the desired type in PowerPoint andrefer to the layout of its data sheet.

Excel data links 81



When you click on this menu item in Excel, the

PowerPoint window is activated. If PowerPoint is notyet running, it starts automatically. In PowerPoint,when the mouse pointer is on a slide, the familiar insertion rectangle appears.

Switch to the slide where you want to insert the chart,or insert a new slide, and place the chart as usual:Click once to accept the default size or click, holdand drag to change the chart’s initial size. For a de-tailed description on how to place, resize and aligna new chart, please refer to Inserting a new chart onpage 14.

After insertion, the chart looks and behaves likea regular think-cell chart that has been created inPowerPoint:

Please refer to Adding and removing labels on

page 16 and Styling the chart on page 17 to learnhow to configure and style the chart.

As well as creating a new chart, you can link aselected data range in your Excel workbook to anexisting chart in a PowerPoint presentation. Simplyclick the To Existing Chart button from the Charts

menu in Excel’s think-cell toolbar and click on thechart in PowerPoint that you wish to link to.

Note: Text fields in PowerPoint can contain up to 57characters. Any additional text from the Excel datasource will be truncated. See Text fields on page 33

Transposing linked data

Having linked a data range to a chart, you can al-ter how the data is interpreted using the Trans-

pose Link button in the think-cell context menu of thedata range. Transposing a data range swaps thechart’s row and column data interpretation, lettingyou, for example, create column charts from rowsrather than columns of data.

Excel data links 82

Note: Transposing a linked data range does notswap the data in the rows and columns.



Updating a linked chart

The most important feature of a chart that is linkedto an Excel workbook is the option to update thechart according to changes in the underlying data.In our example, we want to add a third data series.Double-click the chart to switch to the linked datarange in Excel. Enter the additional data below the

linked range:

Then, select the linked range by clicking on its bor-der to show the familiar think-cell user interface.

Drag a corner of the selection to include the newlyentered data:

Finally, return to PowerPoint. When selecting thelinked chart, it is flagged to indicate that an updateof its linked data has been detected:

Click the Update button next to the flag to incorpo-

rate the data changes from Excel in the chart. Thechart is updated and the flag disappears:

After pressing Update, this button changes to Re-

vert. Click it to take back the changes you just made.The Revert button is available until the PowerPoint fileis closed or the Excel data source changes again. Inthe later case, it is replaced by the Update button.

Even if the chart is not updated, or is updated andthen reverted again, the link to the Excel data sourceremains. Thus, you always have the option to updatethe chart later.

Excel data links 83

You can also let think-cell automatically update thelinked chart for you. This option is available in the



Data Links dialog (Data Links dialog on the currentpage).

Note: Linking a chart to data in Excel using think-cell does not depend on the file names of the Excelor PowerPoint file. Each chart as well as each datarange in Excel is assigned a unique identificationnumber that is used to maintain the link. The tech-nical requirement for reestablishing a link is that

both the Excel file containing the data range andthe PowerPoint file containing the chart are simulta-neously open on the same computer, irrespective of the file names.

Data Links dialog

If you have a large number of charts in your presen-tation, finding and updating all linked charts man-ually is not practical. For a better overview and amore directed approach to update your charts, goto the More menu in the think-cell toolbar in Power-Point and open the Data Links dialog:

The data links dialog shows all linked charts of thecurrent presentation and their update states:

For each linked chart, the following information isavailable in the data links dialog:

– Slide number and a thumbnail that shows the po-

sition of the chart on the slide.– Name of the Excel file that contains the linked

data.

– Time stamp of the last modification of the linkeddata.

– Update or Revert button. The linked Excel file mustbe open for these buttons to be available.

– Auto checkbox, indicating whether or not thechart is being updated automatically as soon aschanges in the linked data are detected.

– The chart entry appears in bold when an updateis pending.

You can leave the data link dialog open while youcontinue editing your slides and data. Using the

data links dialog, you can efficiently manage alllinked charts and their data sources:

– Click on the heading of any of the describedcolumns to sort the list of charts by that column.

Excel data links 84

– Single-click on a row to select the chart (in Nor-mal view) or the slide (in Slide Sorter view).

a range of links, and£

¢

¡Ctrl-click to toggle the selection

of individual charts.



– Double-click on a row to create the same effectas a double-click on the chart itself: The linkedExcel workbook is opened and the linked data isselected. If the data source is not available, theinternal data sheet is opened instead.

The Update and Revert buttons are the same as theones in the upper right corner of the chart: Clickthe Update button to incorporate data changes fromExcel in the PowerPoint chart. Click Revert to undothe update and return to the chart’s previous state.You can also click Revert to undo the latest automaticupdate.

Check the Auto checkbox to let think-cell automat-ically update the chart whenever changes in thelinked data are detected. The chart is not high-

lighted or flagged, but you still have the option tomanually revert the automatic update. Change de-tection works only while both files, Excel and Power-Point, are open at the same time.

Note: If the linked Excel file for a chart is notavailable, and the internal data sheet is openedand edited, then automatic updating for the linkedchart will be disabled. This ensures that any changes

made using the internal data sheet are not automat-ically overwritten when the linked Excel file becomesavailable.

Update, Revert and changing the Auto setting all workon multi-selections as well. Use

£

¢

¡Shift ⇑-click to select

Maintaining data links

After the creation of a link between Excel data and achart in PowerPoint, both Excel and PowerPoint filescontinue to be self-contained independent files:

– You can pass on or edit the files independently.

– You can rename the files. The data links will be

reestablished as soon as the Excel and PowerPointfiles are open at the same time. To store the infor-mation about the reestablished data links the filesshould be saved.

– You can copy and paste linked charts within thesame presentation or even to another presenta-tion. The copy of the chart will then be linked tothe same data source as the original.

– You can send the Excel and PowerPoint files by e-mail. The data links will be reestablished as soonas the Excel and PowerPoint files are open at thesame time on the computer of the receiver. Tostore the information about the reestablished datalinks the files should be saved.

– You can make copies of linked Excel files and use

the copies as alternative data sources for the datalinks. The original and copied Excel files can beindependently edited. The link between a Power-Point presentation and the desired Excel file willbe established when opening one of either the

Excel data links 85

original or the copied Excel files together with thePowerPoint file.

Changing and removing links

To disconnect a chart from its linked data source,



Note: When copies of the same linked range inExcel are present in open workbooks, e.g., after copying a worksheet, it is undefined with whichrange the link will be established when opening thePowerPoint file. A warning is displayed next to af-fected linked ranges in Excel in this case. You shouldthen make all but one copy of the linked range un-available, e.g., by closing the respective workbook.

Editing linked files

If you edit the PowerPoint file without the linked Excelfile(s) being available, linked charts simply behaveas regular charts with an internal data sheet. Usingthink-cell, you can change the chart’s design anddata without restriction.

Similarly, you can freely edit an Excel workbookwithout the linked PowerPoint file(s) being available.With think-cell installed, any linked data ranges thatare not currently connected to an open PowerPointpresentation, are highlighted with a light red frame.

As soon as you open both the data source in Exceland the chart in PowerPoint at the same time, thelink is reestablished. In Excel, the highlight of the

linked data range changes from red to green. InPowerPoint, the chart’s current data is compared tothe data source. If changes are detected, the chart ishighlighted in the data links dialog, and it is flaggedwhen selected. You can now manually update thechart to the latest data from Excel.

simply select the button Break Excel Link from thechart’s context menu:

From that point on, the chart only uses the think-celldata sheet in PowerPoint.

Similarly, you can disconnect a linked data rangein Excel from its charts: Select the linked range byclicking on its frame. When the frame turns blue,indicating a think-cell selection, right-click on it andselect the Delete button. The think-cell frame isremoved while the data itself remains untouched.

Any linked charts will no longer be able to connect tothis data range as their data source, and will insteaduse their internal data sheets.

Note: You cannot undo the removal of a linked

frame, but you can create a new link with an existingchart, when you need it (see below).

Whenever you remove one participant of a link, ei-ther the data range in Excel or the chart in Power-Point, the other side does not get deleted with it.

Excel data links 86

Charts in PowerPoint fall back to using their inter-nal data sheets, and linked data ranges in Excel

not be easily altered. Here are a few suggestionsthat may help you in such situations:



simply remain in place until they are explicitly re-moved. This is important because there may beother charts in other presentations linking to thesame data source.

If you want to link an existing chart to an Exceldata source, first go to the Excel workbook andselect the desired data range. You can also selectan existing linked range, indicated by the colored

think-cell selection frame. Then switch to PowerPointand select the desired chart. If the chart is alreadylinked to some other data source, disconnect it asdescribed above. Now the Excel link button in thechart’s context menu has changed to Establish

Excel Link . Click this button to establish a link fromthe selected chart in PowerPoint to the selected datarange in Excel.

Note: If you want to remove all data links from apresentation, use the data links dialog (Data Linksdialog on page 83). In the data links dialog, you cansimply select all charts and press

£

¢

¡Delete to remove all

links in a single action.

How to compile the data

When creating charts directly from Excel, you prob-ably already have your data in Excel. In some cases,however, you may not wish to create a chart usingall the data you have in your Excel sheet. Alterna-tively, the data may be in a fixed format that can

– Add a new sheet to the Excel file and compilethe data for your charts on this interface sheet.If you create this sheet using Excel references,then the data in the sheet and the linked chartsin PowerPoint will be updated whenever the orig-inal referred to data changes. Using a dedicatedsheet as the source for your charts also facilitatespreparing the data specifically for the intended

purpose. For example, you can use think-cellround to consistently round the data before pre-senting them in a chart (see think-cell round onpage 93).

– You can simply hide entire rows or columns of data from being reflected in the chart by usingExcel’s Hide command. Keep in mind that the hid-den data will appear in the chart as soon as

you use Excel’s Unhide command and update thechart.

– Similarly, you can use Excel’s Group and Outline

feature to hide data that you do not want to beshown in the chart.

Excel data links 87

What happens when copying a linked chart?

You can copy a linked chart just like any other chart

b d l l d d l h h£

C l



Frequently asked questions

What are the advantages over Microsoft OLE?

You may be familiar with OLE (Object Linking andEmbedding) in Microsoft Office. The idea is simi-lar to think-cell’s linking, allowing the creation of charts in PowerPoint that can later be updated withdata changes from Excel. However, think-cell’s link-ing technique has several advantages over OLE:

– The charts are always the same, whether they arelinked or not. Even linked charts are native MSGraph charts, not Excel charts pasted into Power-Point.

– Charts can be linked to Excel at any time, not onlywhen they are created.

– Linked charts remain editable, even when the

linked data source is not available.

– Links in think-cell are independent of the file nameor path. Simply open both files and any existinglinks between the files are reestablished.

by duplicating a slide, duplicating the chart, ¢ ¡Ctrl-dragging the chart or copy-pasting the chart to an-other slide or to another presentation. In fact, evenmaking a copy of the presentation file is a way tocopy a contained linked chart.

In any case, the original and the copy are indistin-guishable. Both link to the same Excel data rangeand, if they are open simultaneously, will both re-

ceive an update when Excel data changes.

What happens when a linked chart is deleted?

When you delete a linked chart, the link in Power-Point is removed together with the chart. If there isno other chart in an open presentation linking tothe same Excel data range, the frame in Excel turns

from green to red, indicating that the link cannot beestablished.

The linked data range in Excel is not affected in anyother way by the deletion of a linked chart. After all,it is possible that a copy of the linked chart has beenmade, which, when opened, should reestablish itslink.

How can I get rid of the red frames in my Excel worksheets?

Different coloured frames in the Excel worksheets in-dicate linked data ranges. A green frame indicatesthat a link has been established between the framed

Excel data links 88

data range and a chart in an open PowerPoint pre-sentation. In contrast, a red frame indicates that no

li k d h t i tl A d f d t

What happens to a linked chart when its data source

is unavailable?

Wh th E l kb k th t t i h t’



linked chart is currently open. A red frame does notnecessarily mean that there are no charts at all link-ing to that data range. It just means that in the cur-rently open presentations there are no such charts.

If you are sure that the framed data range is nolonger required as a data source for any charts,you can remove the frame with the Delete but-ton from the context menu. Together with the frame,

the link information is removed from the Excel work-book. Any charts that are linked to the concernedExcel data range will not be able to establish their links in the future. Instead, they will use their internaldata sheets.

The Excel data itself is not affected.

How can I see which charts in a presentation are

linked, and where their linked data sources are?

If you are unsure about the data sources of thecharts in a presentation, go to the More menu andopen the Data Links dialog. This dialog displays a listof all linked charts in the current presentation. Clickon an entry to display the corresponding chart.

The file name of the Excel file where the linked data

range was last found is also available. The Autocheckbox indicates if the chart has been set to up-date automatically.

For a detailed description refer to section Data Linksdialog on page 83.

When the Excel workbook that contains a chart’slinked data range is not open and cannot be foundin the same file location where it used to be, thechart cannot establish its link. Instead, it will use itsinternal data sheet, which always contains a copy of the linked data, and allow you to change the chart.

The internal data sheet of a linked chart is similar tothe one of a regular chart. Even if there are multiple

charts linked to the same Excel range, their internaldata sheets are independent.

If you want to reestablish the link to the Excel datarange, simply open the Excel workbook and the pre-sentation with the linked chart at the same time. Thechart in PowerPoint and the data in Excel will thenautomatically connect. When updating the chartwith the linked data, any changes you made to thedata in the internal data sheet will be overwritten.

How can I use the internal data sheet instead of the

linked Excel data source?

To disconnect a chart from its linked data source,use the Break Excel Link button from the chart’scontext menu. From now on, the chart only uses the

think-cell data sheet in PowerPoint.You can remove the link from a chart, whether thelinked Excel data range is currently open or not. For the Excel side of the data link, breaking the link of a chart has the same effect as removing the chart.

Excel data links 89

For further information read section Changing andremoving links on page 85.

For more information read section Updating alinked chart on page 82.



How can I enable or disable Auto-updating?

Go to the More menu and open the Data Links dialog.This dialog displays a list of all linked charts in thecurrent presentation. The Auto checkbox determinesif a chart is set to update automatically.

When selecting a chart in the presentation, the cor-responding entry in the Data Links dialog will be se-

lected, and vice versa.

For a detailed description refer to section Data Linksdialog on page 83.

Why is my linked chart not updating although it is set

to Auto-update?

The PowerPoint side and the Excel side of a data

link can only connect when both files are open atthe same time. Therefore, when the data in Excelis changed while the PowerPoint presentation is notopen, and then the presentation is opened withoutthe Excel workbook being open at the same time,the linked charts will not detect the changes in their data sources. As soon as the Excel workbook con-taining the linked data range is open, the link will

be established and the changes will be detected. If the chart is set to Auto-update, it will update now.Otherwise, the chart will be highlighted in the DataLinks dialog, and it will be flagged when selected.You can then decide whether you want to incorpo-rate the changed data into the chart or not.

Why is my linked chart indicating a pending update

although the data in Excel did not change?

Whenever a link is established between an openPowerPoint presentation and an open Excel work-book, the data from the internal data sheet is com-pared to the linked data range. If they are not thesame, the chart is flagged to indicate that an up-

date is due. If Auto-update is enabled, it is updatedimmediately.

A pending update may also be detected when thedata in the Excel workbook is unchanged, but thedata in the internal data sheet has been modified.For a linked chart, the linked Excel data range takespriority over the internal data sheet. Therefore, anupdate will always overwrite any changes in the in-

ternal data sheet.

To protect you against data loss, whenever youmake changes in the internal data sheet of a linkedchart, Auto-update is disabled for the concernedchart.

How can I link an existing chart to a data range in an

Excel workbook?

Go to the Excel workbook and select the desiredrange. Then switch to PowerPoint, select the desiredchart, and click the Establish Excel Link button inthe context menu.

Excel data links 90

For a detailed description, refer to section Chang-ing and removing links on page 85. To learn how toinsert a chart directly from Excel, read section Cre-

ti h t f E l 80

I have a lot of Excel files to visualize with think-cell.

Can I run think-cell in batch mode?

It is possible to program think cell think cell offers a



ating a chart from Excel on page 80.

My linked chart seems to ignore part of the Excel data

range. Why?

In addition to the main data, the linked range inExcel contains some cells to the left and on top,which are reserved for category and series labels.

If the selected range encloses only the main data,part of the data will be interpreted as labels and willnot show up in the chart.

If you are unsure about the required layout, simplyinsert a new chart of the desired type in PowerPointand refer to the layout of its data sheet.

For further information read section Creating a chartfrom Excel on page 80.

Why is Excel slow when I have lots of linked data

ranges?

Excel performance can be improved by disablingautomatic error checking. To do this, select fromExcel’s Tools menu Options, click on the Error Checking

tab and uncheck the Enable background error checking

box. For Excel 2007 and later go to the dialog ExcelOptions, select Formulas and uncheck the box Enable

background error checking in the section Error Checking.

It is possible to program think-cell. think-cell offers afunction to create presentations from templates (seeProgramming think-cell on page 113).

15. More tools



This chapter explains various small features of think-cell that can make life a lot easier.

Special characters

Experienced PowerPoint users find the built-in Insert

→ Symbol feature inconvenient for frequent use. Withthink-cell installed, there is a simpler way to insertspecial characters.

Open the Special Characters dialog from the More

menu in the think-cell toolbar.

You will find all the symbols you need on a singlepage, grouped by usage context. Now, with a clickof the mouse, you select the desired character or

symbol and the character is inserted at the cursor location.

Note: If no shape or text label is selected, thethink-cell special character dialog has no effect. If

you have one shape or text label selected, it will beswitched to text editing mode.

Save and send selected slides

Sometimes it is useful to save parts of a set of slides.With think-cell you no longer need to duplicate thefile and then delete unwanted slides. Simply selectthe desired slides from the outline pane on the left

or from the slide sorter view, click on More from thethink-cell toolbar and choose Save Selected Slides....

After the new file is created, it is immediately openedfor editing.

If you want to send the selected slides by e-mail, youcan also choose Send Selected Slides... and an e-mailtemplate with attachment will be composed in your default e-mail application.

The files created by using Send/Save Se-

lected Slides... contain a time stamp con-forming to ISO 8601 in the file name tomake them globally unambiguous. The filePresentation1 20110121T1556+01 slides 2-3.ppt

More tools 92

would contain Slides 2 through 3 fromPresentation1.ppt and was sent or saved onJanuary 21, 2011 at 15:56 in time zone UTC+1.“T” separates date and time

Entire presentation, Current slide or Selection) and thenclick Apply to replace the fonts or click OK to closethe dialog as well.



T separates date and time.

Changing the language

Setting the language correctly is crucial if you wish touse PowerPoint’s spell checker. think-cell adds extraoptions to let you change the language of the textin a slide or in a complete presentation. These op-

tions can be found in the Tools → Language... menuin PowerPoint 2003 and earlier PowerPoint versions.The equivalent menu in PowerPoint 2007 and later is found by clicking the Language menu item in theReview tab.

Simply select the desired language in the dialog andclick either on Text on Slide to change the languageof all text on the current slide or on All Text to change

the language of all text in the presentation.

Changing fonts

Changing the font of text within a large presentationcan be a lot of work. think-cell’s Replace Fonts... fea-ture can be used to greatly simplify the task. The fea-ture can be accessed in the Format menu of Power-

Point or theEditing

group on theHome

tab of thePowerPoint ribbon. It replaces PowerPoint’s Replace

Fonts dialog. The drop down boxes in the dialogcan be used to select the font to replace and thenew font, and the font size can also be optionallyadjusted. Select the scope for the changes (either

Automatic case code

You can add a textbox to the master slide that alwaysshows the file name or, alternatively, file path of thepresentation. If the file name is the same as the casecode used to identify a project in your organization,you can use this textbox to show the case code on

each slide. The content of the textbox is updatedwhenever the file is saved under a different name.

To add a textbox that shows the case code, followthese steps:

1. Switch to the master slide view (menu View →

Master → Slide Master ).

2. Insert a new textbox and place it on the mas-

ter slide. You may need to insert dummy text tokeep it from being removed immediately again.The dummy text will be replaced by the case codewhen the file is saved.

3. In PowerPoint 2007 and later

a) Right-click the textbox and open the Size and

Position dialog.

b) Go to the Alt Text tab and find the input areafor Alternative text or, in PowerPoint 2010, for the Description.

In earlier PowerPoint versions

More tools 93

a) Open the Format Text Box dialog (double-click the textbox or select Format Text Box fromthe context menu).

b) G t th W b t b d fi d th i t f



b) Go to the Web tab and find the input area for Alternative text.

4. In the input area, type in the following:

– casecode to have the filename automaticallydisplayed in the textbox;

– CASECODE to have the capitalized filename auto-

matically displayed in the textbox;– casepath to have the full file path automatically

displayed in the textbox;

– CASEPATH to have the capitalized full file pathautomatically displayed in the textbox.

As soon as you save the file, the case code showsup on the slides.

Note: The case code textbox only works on the mas-ter slide, not on individual slides.

think-cell round

When data is compiled for a report or PowerPointpresentation, rounding summations in Excel is a fre-quent problem. It is often desirable, but difficult toachieve, that rounded totals exactly match the totalof the rounded addends. For example, consider thefollowing table:

When the values are rounded to integers usingExcel’s Format-Cell feature, the following tableresults. Totals which appear to be “miscalculated”are in bold:

Similarly, when Excel’s standard rounding functionsare used, totals of the rounded values are calculatedcorrectly but rounding errors accumulate and resultsoften deviate substantially from the actual totals of the original values. The following table shows theresult of =ROUND(x,0) for the example above. Totalsthat deviate from the original value by 1 or moreare in bold:

More tools 94

Using think-cell round, you can achieve consistentlyrounded totals with minimal “cheating”: While mostvalues are rounded to the nearest integer, a fewvalues are rounded in the opposite direction, thus

apply these functions to your own data using thethink-cell round toolbar buttons.



va ues a e ou ded e oppos e d ec o , usmaintaining correct calculations without accumulat-ing rounding error. Since there are many possibil-ities to achieve correctly rounded totals by chang-ing values, the software picks a solution that re-quires the minimum number of values changed andthe minimum deviation from the precise values. For example, rounding down 10.5 to 10 is preferableover rounding down 3.7 to 3. The following tableshows an optimal solution for the above example,with “cheated” values in bold:

To achieve this output in your own calculation, sim-ply select the concerned range of Excel cells. Then,click the toolbar button and, if necessary, ad-just the rounding precision using the toolbar’s drop-down box.

Using think-cell round

think-cell round seamlessly integrates into MicrosoftExcel, providing a set of functions that are similar toExcel’s standard rounding functions. You can easily

In Excel 2007 and later the toolbars have been re-placed by ribbons. The think-cell round ribbon canbe found in the Formulas tab.

Rounding parameters. Like the Excel functions, thethink-cell rounding functions take two parameters:

x The value that is to be rounded. This can be aconstant, a formula or a reference to another cell.

n The rounding precision. The meaning of this pa-rameter depends on the function you use. The pa-

rameters for the think-cell functions are the sameas for the equivalent Excel functions. Refer to thetable below for examples.

As in Excel, think-cell round can not only round tointeger values, but to any multiple. For example, if you want to represent your data in 5-10-15-... steps,simply round to multiples of five.

In Excel, you must use different functions, dependingon the desired rounding precision. Examples are theROUND and the MROUND functions, which interpretthe parameter n differently. Using the dropdown boxin the think-cell round toolbar, simply type in or se-lect the desired rounding precision. think-cell round

More tools 95

chooses the appropriate function and parametersfor you.

The following table provides some examples of rounding using the toolbar ROUND or MROUND

Button Formula Description

TCROUND(x, n) Try rounding x to thenearest multiple of the

desired precision butcheat if needed



rounding, using the toolbar, ROUND or MROUND

together with their specific n-parameter.

Toolbar 100 50 2 1 0.01ROUND -2 - - 0 2MROUND 100 50 2 1 -

1.018 0 0 2 1 1.0217 0 0 18 17 17.0054.6 100 50 55 54 54.601234.1234 1200 1250 1234 1234 1234.128776.54321 8800 8800 8776 8777 8776.54

If the values are not displayed the way you expectthem to, verify that the Excel Cell Formatting is set toGeneral and the columns are wide enough to displayall decimal places.

cheat if needed.

TCROUNDUP(x, n) Always round x awayfrom zero, do not cheat.

TCROUNDDOWN(x, n) Always round x towardszero, do not cheat.

TCROUNDNEAR(x, n) Always round x to thenearest multiple of thedesired precision, do

not cheat.

Remove all think-cellround functions from theselected cells.

Select or type thedesired roundingmultiple.

Highlight all cells wherethink-cell round decidedto cheat instead of rounding to nearest.

During calculation, aclock provides feedbackon the calculationprogress.

For optimal results with as little deviation fromthe underlying values as possible, you should use

TCROUND wherever possible. Only use the morerestrictive functions TCROUNDDOWN, TCROUNDUP

or TCROUNDNEAR if you must.

More tools 96

Attention: You should never use nondeterministicfunctions like RAND() within any of the TCROUND for-mulas. If functions return a different value every timethey are evaluated, think-cell round will make mis-

Multiplication with a constant. In many cases, think-cell round produces good results when constantmultiplication is involved, i.e., at most one of thecoefficients is derived from the result of another



takes calculating values.

Layout of the calculation. The rectangular layout of the example above is only for sake of demonstra-tion. You can use the TCROUND functions to de-termine the display of arbitrary summations spreadacross your Excel sheet. Excel’s 3-D references to

other sheets and links to other files do also work.Placement of TCROUND functions. Since TCROUND

functions are meant to control the output of a cell,they must be the outermost function:

Bad: =TCROUND(A1, 1)+TCROUND( SUM(B1:E1), 1 )Good: =TCROUND( A1+SUM(B1:E1), 1 )

Bad: =3*TCROUNDDOWN(A1, 1)Good: =TCROUNDDOWN(3*A1, 1)

If you happen to enter something along the linesof the bad examples, think-cell round will notify youwith the Excel error value #VALUE!.

Limitations of think-cell round

think-cell round always finds a solution for arbi-trary summations with subtotals and totals. think-cell round also provides sensible solutions for someother calculations involving multiplication and nu-merical functions. However, for mathematical rea-sons, the existence of a consistently rounded solu-tion cannot be guaranteed as soon as operatorsother than +, - and SUM are used.

TCROUND function. Consider the following example:

The precise calculation for cell C1 is3×1.3+1.4=5.3. This result can be met byrounding up the value 1.4 to 2:

However, think-cell round can only “cheat” byrounding up or rounding down. Further deviationfrom the original values is not supported. Thus, for certain combinations of input values, no consis-tently rounded solution can be found. In this case,the function TCROUND evaluates to the Excel error

value #NUM!. The following example illustrates anunsolvable problem:

The precise calculation for cell C1 is6×1.3+1.4=9.2. Rounding cells A1 and B1would result in 6×1+2=8 or 6×2+1=13. Theactual result 9.2 cannot be rounded to 8 or 13,

and the output from think-cell round looks like this:

Note: The Excel function AVERAGE is interpreted bythink-cell round as a combination of summation and

More tools 97

constant multiplication. Also, a summation wherethe same addend appears more than once is math-ematically equivalent to a constant multiplication,and the existence of a solution is not guaranteed.

In this case, the precise calculation for cell C1 wouldbe 8.6×1.7=14.62. Since cell A1 and cell B1 areconnected by a multiplication, think-cell round can-not integrate the formulas from these cells into a



General multiplication and other functions. As longas the TCROUND functions are used for all rele-vant cells and intermediate results are connectedmerely by +, -, SUM and AVERAGE, the addends aswell as (intermediate) totals are integrated into asingle rounding problem. In these cases, think-cell

round will find a solution that provides consistencythroughout all cells involved, if such a solution ex-ists.

Since TCROUND is a normal Excel function, it canbe combined with arbitrary functions and opera-tors. But when you use functions other than the onesmentioned above to connect results from TCROUND

statements, think-cell round cannot integrate the

components into one interconnected problem. In-stead, the components of the formula will be takenas distinct problems which will be solved indepen-dently. The results will then be used as input to other formulas.

In many cases, the output from think-cell roundwill still be reasonable. There are cases, however,where the use of operators other than +, -, SUM

and AVERAGE leads to rounded results which are far off from the result of the non-rounded calculation.Consider the following example:

common problem. Instead, after detecting cell A1as valid input, cell B1 is evaluated independentlyand the output is taken as a constant within the re-maining problem. Since there are no further con-straints, value 1.7 from cell B1 is rounded to thenearest integer, which is 2.

At this point, the “precise” calculation for cell C1is 8.6×2=17.2. This is the problem that think-cellround now tries to solve. There is a consistent so-lution which requires rounding up 17.2 to 18. Theresult looks like this:

Note that the rounded value in cell C1, which is 18,

greatly differs from the original value 14.62.

Troubleshooting TCROUND formulas

There are two possible error results you may comeacross when using think-cell round: #VALUE! and#NUM!.

#VALUE!. The #VALUE! error hints to syntactical

problems, such as mistyped formulas or bad pa-rameters. For example, the second parameter for TCROUND must be an integer value. Also, pay at-tention to use correct delimiters. For example, whilein international Excel the formula looks like this:

More tools 98

=TCROUND(1.7, 0), in a localized German version of Excel it must be written as: =TCROUND(1,7; 0)

Another mistake specific to think-cell round is theplacement of the TCROUND function call: You can-

You can try to restate the problem to get a consistentsolution. Try the following:

– Use a finer precision for some or all TCROUNDstatements.



pnot use a TCROUND function within another formula.Please make sure that TCROUND is the outermostfunction of the cell’s formula. (see Placement of TCROUND functions on page 96)

#NUM!. The #NUM! error results from numericalproblems. When the output of a TCROUND function

is #NUM!, this means that the problem as statedby the given set of formulas is mathematicallyunsolvable. (see Limitations of think-cell round onpage 96)

As long as the formulas enclosed by TCROUND func-tions contain merely +, - and SUM, and all TCROUND

statements share the same precision (second pa-rameter), a solution is guaranteed to exist and willbe found by think-cell round. However, in the follow-ing cases there is no guarantee that a consistentlyrounded solution exists:

– Formulas involve other operations like multipli-cation or numerical functions. Also, summationswhere the same addend appears more than onceare mathematically equivalent to a multiplication.

– You use different precisions in the second param-eter of the TCROUND function.

– You make frequent use of the specific func-tions TCROUNDDOWN, TCROUNDUP andTCROUNDNEAR.

statements.

– Do not use TCROUND with multiplication or nu-merical functions other than +, - and SUM.

– Use the same precision (second parameter) for allTCROUND statements.

– Use TCROUND instead of the more specific

functions TCROUNDDOWN, TCROUNDUP andTCROUNDNEAR wherever possible.

Appendix



A. Deployment guide



This chapter describes how to deploy think-cell in alarger organization. If you want to install a personalcopy of think-cell on your computer, please refer toInstallation and update on page 10.

Workstation prerequisites

To install and run think-cell, the following softwaremust be installed:

– Microsoft Windows 2000 SP4, XP, Vista, 7 or 8

– Microsoft Office XP, 2003, 2007 SP1 or 2010with at least the following components:

– Microsoft Office Excel

– Microsoft Office PowerPoint

– Visual Basic for Applications (from OfficeShared Features)

– Microsoft Graph (from Office Tools)

The installation of think-cell requires about 55 MBof disk space.

Windows XP or later and Office XP or later areshipped with all necessary components to run think-cell software.

Initial installation

The think-cell installation file setup.exe understandsthe same commands as Windows’ msiexec com-mand. To start setup.exe from a script, e.g., when

using remote maintenance software to install think-cell, use

setup /qn TARGETDIR="c:\Program Files\

think-cell"

All parameters are optional. The /qn option sup-presses the Windows Installer user interface andTARGETDIR sets the destination folder. For English ver-sions of Windows, if the installing user has local ad-ministrator privileges, the default folder is

C:\Program Files\think-cell

If the installing user has no administrator privileges,the installation is performed only for the installing

Deployment guide 101

user, and by default think-cell is installed into thefolder



options that may be specified on the installationcommand line.

Note: All of these parameters apply to the setup.msias well as the setup.exe.



or, for Windows Vista, 7 and 8:


For localized versions of Windows, the correspond-ing, differently named folders are used.

With the LICENSEKEY parameter, a license key can

also be specified during installation. You would usethe following command line, replacing xxxxx withyour think-cell license key:

setup /qn LICENSEKEY=xxxxx

You can further append the ALLUSERS option to over-ride the default installation mode:

ALLUSERS=1 Force installation for all users. This will

fail if called without local administrator privileges.ALLUSERS=2 Automatic mode (default): If called with

sufficient privileges, the software is installed for allusers. Otherwise, the setup falls back to a single-user installation.

ALLUSERS="" (two successive double-quotes withoutspace in between) Force single-user installation.This overrides the automatic mode for users that

have administrator privileges.

Note: See Ribbon in Office 2007 and later onpage 104, Updates on page 106 and Online qual-ity assurance on page 108 for details of additional

Installed files

The following files are required for think-cell and arecreated in the installation directory:

– tcaddin.dll (< 20 MB)

– 7/manual.pdf (< 2 MB)– 9/manual.pdf (< 2 MB)

– custom.xml (< 200 KB)

– sla.rtf (ca. 100 KB)

– splash.bmp (ca. 100 KB)

– vcomp100.dll (ca. 50 KB)

– d3dx9_43.dll (ca. 2 MB)

– dbghelp.dll (ca. 2 MB)

– tcdiag.exe (< 1 MB)

– tcdotnet.dll (ca. 8 KB)

– tcmail.exe (< 600 KB)

– tcrunxl.exe (< 500 KB)

– think-cell.adm (ca. 10 KB)

– dml-chart.xsd (< 100 KB)

– dml-chartDrawing.xsd (< 10 KB)

– dml-diagram.xsd (< 100 KB)

– dml-lockedCanvas.xsd (< 10 KB)


– dml-main.xsd (< 200 KB)

– dml-picture.xsd (< 10 KB)

– shared-commonSimpleTypes.xsd (< 10 KB)– shared-relationshipReference.xsd (< 10 KB)

Registry entries

To interact with Microsoft PowerPoint and Microsoft

Excel, the installation of think-cell creates somenew keys in the following sections of the Windows

i D di h h h l



shared relationshipReference.xsd ( 0 )

– style.xsd (< 20 KB)

On 64-bit versions of Windows Vista, 7 and 8 thefollowing additional files are required for think-celland are created in the installation directory:

– x64/tcaddin.dll (< 25 MB)

– x64/tcdiag.exe (< 1 MB)

– x64/tcrunxl.dll (< 1 MB)

– x64/vcomp100.dll (ca. 56 KB)

– x64/d3dx9_43.dll (ca. 5 MB)

– x64/dbghelp.dll (ca. 2 MB)

The think-cell installation does not write to folders

other than the chosen installation folder.

While using think-cell additional files are written tothe following folders:


Application Data\think-cell



Windows Vista, 7 and 8:

C:\Users\[user]\AppData\Roaming\think-cell


registry. Depending on whether you have a regular installation or a single-user-installation, the keysare created in the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE or in theHKEY_CURRENT_USER section:

\Software\Classes\CLSID\

{3EAB3858-A0E0-4A3B-A405-F4D525E85265}

\Software\Classes\CLSID\

{D52B1FA2-1EF8-4035-9DA6-8AD0F40267A1}

\Software\Classes\thinkcell.addin

\Software\Classes\thinkcell.addin.1

\Software\Classes\TCLayout.ActiveDocument

\Software\Classes\TCLayout.ActiveDocument.1

\Software\Microsoft\Office\

PowerPoint\Addins\thinkcell.addin

\Software\Microsoft\Office\

Excel\Addins\thinkcell.addin

In 64-bit versions of Windows the following addi-tional keys are created:

\Software\Classes\Wow6432Node\CLSID\

{3EAB3858-A0E0-4A3B-A405-F4D525E85265}\Software\Classes\Wow6432Node\CLSID\

{D52B1FA2-1EF8-4035-9DA6-8AD0F40267A1}

\Software\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Office\

PowerPoint\Addins\thinkcell.addin


\Software\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Office\

Excel\Addins\thinkcell.addin

The license key and the settings for online qualityassurance and automatic updates are saved in thefollowing section of the Windows registry:

think-cell’s specific configuration options are de-scribed in the think-cell.adm administrative templatefile, which is located in the directory where think-cell

has been installed. In the Group Policy Object Ed-itor use Add/Remove Templates... under Action to add



following section of the Windows registry:

Software\Classes\Software\think-cell

If group policies based on think-cell.adm (seeGroup Policies on this page) are used in your network, think-cell may also use:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Policies\

think-cell

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\

think-cell

think-cell changes no other sections of the Windowsregistry.

Group Policies

think-cell supports Windows’ group policies to cen-trally control think-cell’s behavior for a group of users or on a group of machines. To use group poli-cies, you need to create a group policy object andlink it to a site, domain or organizational unit usingthe Group Policy Management Console.

The following explanation requires an understand-ing and working knowledge of group policy con-

cepts and administration. For general informationon Windows group policy concepts and details of their usage and update mechanisms refer to thecontents of the online help of the Group Policy Man-agement Console.

/ p

the options in think-cell.adm. A new node think-cell

is added to the node Administrative Templates in thefollowing two places: the think-cell settings config-ured under Computer Configuration determine registryentries at

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\

think-cell

and the think-cell settings configured under User

Configuration determine registry entries at

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Policies\

think-cell

If settings are enabled at both places, those under Computer Configuration take precedence.

The items of the node think-cell show the availablesettings that can be controlled with group policies.Each item has a description with the available valuesfor this item.

You can use group policies to activate or deacti-vate think-cell for a group of individual users. For instance, if you deploy think-cell on a terminal server

you need to make sure that only the licensed usershave access to think-cell. When used in the follow-ing way, group policies offer a convenient methodto do so:


1. Set up one group policy object which disablesthink-cell completely and link it to your domain.Use the Product Restriction setting of the administra-

tive template think-cell with the appropriate value.

2 Add another group policy object which activates

http://www.think-cell.com/ribbon

The following properties may be specified during

installation to customize the think-cell group withinPowerPoint:

f M b f h

http://www.think-cell.com/ribbon



2. Add another group policy object which activatesthe software for the licensed users. This shouldalso be linked to your domain and be applied af-ter the disabling one. Because group policy ob-jects are applied in reverse order the enabling ob-ject should be further up in the list in Group PolicyManagement Console.

3. In the section Security Filtering of the Group Pol-icy Management Console restrict access to theenabling group policy object explicitly to the li-censed users of think-cell.

Another convenient use for group policies is the cen-tralized management and distribution of the think-cell license key to the think-cell users in your orga-

nization. The license key is one of the settings of theadministrative template think-cell.

Ribbon in Office 2007 and later

The think-cell toolbar in Office 2007 and later isimplemented as a ribbon group. The default posi-tion for the think-cell group in PowerPoint is in theInsert tab (TabInsert), after the Insert Illustrations

group (GroupInsertIllustrations); the default posi-tion in Excel is after the Insert Excel Charts group(GroupInsertChartsExcel) in the Insert tab.

Detailed information about customizing the Officeribbon is available from:

RIBBONPPTABINSERT Specify XML attributes for the tab

element containing the think-cell group.

RIBBONPPGROUPINSERT Specify XML attributes for thethink-cell group element.

RIBBONPPXMLNS Specify additional XML namespace

attributes for thecustomUI

element.Note: All of these parameters apply to the setup.msias well as the setup.exe.

If no id, idMso or idQ attribute is specified usingthe RIBBONPPTABINSERT property then the think-cellgroup will be placed in the Insert tab. Similarly,if no id or idQ attribute is specified using theRIBBONPPGROUPINSERT property then a unique local

id for the think-cell group will be automaticallygenerated. Additionally, if no label is specifiedusing the RIBBONPPGROUPINSERT property then thelabel think-cell will be used.

Adding the following option to the setup commandline, for example, will place the think-cell group ina new, user-defined tab, positioned after the built-inHome tab:

RIBBONPPTABINSERT="id=""TabNew"" label=

""My New Tab"" insertAfterMso=""TabHome"""


Note: Any quote characters in the XML snippetsmust be double-quoted when specifying the prop-erties on the setup command line.

Alternatively, adding the following options to thesetup command line will place the think-cell group

the add-ins can position groups within this commonuser-defined tab. Specifying a qualified identifier for the think-cell group lets other add-ins or templates

position groups relative to the group. Similarly,the think-cell group can use qualified identifiers to



setup command line will place the think cell groupin the built-in Home tab after the Font group andlabel the group:

RIBBONPPTABINSERT="idMso=""TabHome"""

RIBBONPPGROUPINSERT="insertAfterMso=

""GroupFont"" label=""think-cell"""

The idQ attribute can be used to specify qualifiedidentifiers for both the think-cell group and tab.

Any namespaces required for the qualified identi-fiers can be specified using the RIBBONPPXMLNS prop-erty.

For example, adding the following two options tothe setup command line will place the think-cell

group in a user-defined tab TabUser, qualified us-ing the namespace http://example.com/ribbon, andpositioned before the Insert tab:

RIBBONPPXMLNS="xmlns:ribbon=

""http://example.com/ribbon"""

RIBBONPPTABINSERT="idQ=""ribbon:TabUser""

label=""My User Tab""

insertBeforeMso=""TabInsert"""

Qualified identifiers can be useful when severaladd-ins or templates wish to customize the Power-Point ribbon. If several add-ins, for example, specifya tab using the same qualified identifier then asingle user-defined tab will be created and each of

position itself relative to the groups of other add-insor templates. For example, the following optionsspecify a qualified identifier for the think-cell groupand positions it relative to a user-defined group:

RIBBONPPXMLNS="xmlns:ribbon=

""http://example.com/ribbon""

xmlns:special=

""http://example.com/special"""

RIBBONPPGROUPINSERT="

idQ=""ribbon:GroupThinkCell""

insertAfterQ=""special:GroupSpecial"""

It is important to note that the order in whichadd-ins or templates are loaded may influence

the customization of the PowerPoint ribbon. If, inthe example above, the add-in that creates thespecial:GroupSpecial group is loaded after thethink-cell add-in then positioning relative to thespecial:GroupSpecial will have no effect. The order of loading cannot always be controlled and it isrecommended that pairs of user-defined groupsrequiring relative positioning should both position

themselves relative to the other. This should ensurethat whichever group is loaded last will positionitself correctly relative to the other. In the above ex-ample, the XML code for the special:GroupSpecial

group should contain an insertBeforeQ attribute


that references the think-cell group’s qualifiedidentifier.

The think-cell group in Excel can be simi-larly customized using the RIBBONXLTABINSERT,RIBBONXLGROUPINSERT and RIBBONXLXMLNS properties.

web server such as Apache or Microsoft InternetInformation Server (IIS) that all think-cell userswithin your organization can access. The following

files must be placed on the web server hosting your updates:



p p

Updates

think-cell has built-in automatic update support. If automatic updates are enabled and PowerPoint isstarted, the software checks whether a new version

is available. The user then has the option to either accept or delay the update. If you would prefer tohave this feature deactivated please contact us.

If available, think-cell uses the Microsoft Back-ground Intelligent Transfer Service (BITS) todownload updates. BITS automatically frees band-width when the user needs it, and hence does notinterfere with dial-up connections. It also recovers

gracefully from network interruptions common inmobile computing environments. BITS is includedin Windows 2000 Service Pack 3 or later. To installit separately from Microsoft’s site, go to:

http://www.think-cell.com/bits

Before any downloaded code is executed, the in-tegrity of the files is verified by checking think-cell’s

digital signature. Each update is approximately20 MB in size.

Updates are usually hosted on think-cell’s webserver, but you have the option to host updateswithin your own intranet. To do so, you need a

– An XML text file, typically called update.xml, thatcontrols the update process. See below for a de-scription of the update XML file format.

– One or more setup_<version>.exe update files,supplied by think-cell.

After placing the necessary files on the web server,think-cell must be installed with the UPDATESURL com-mand line option specifying the location of the up-date XML file (see Initial installation on page 100),e.g.

UPDATESURL="http://example.com/update.xml"

The update XML file must contain a list of scenarios,

with each scenario consisting of a set of conditionsand the corresponding URL of a setup file. The firstscenario whose conditions are met determines thefile that the computer will download and install. Byapplying conditions such as a list of machine or user names, different users can receive different updates.For example, new program versions can first be dis-tributed to a small group of pilot users before they

are rolled out in the whole organization.Figure A.1 on page 110 shows a typical exampleof an update XML file. Conditions within the file arewritten in the Windows Management Instrumenta-tion Query Language (WQL), which gives access to


all relevant system parameters. To learn more aboutWQL, go to:

http://www.think-cell.com/wql

If you are interested in authoring your own WQLqueries it helps to install the Microsoft WMI Tools

– Click Cancel to dismiss the dialog.

– Click Uninstall to uninstall think-cell.

If the expiration date has already passed, the mes-sage “The license key of this think-cell product hasexpired Please enter a new license key:” is shown

http://www.think-cell.com/bits

http://www.think-cell.com/wql



queries, it helps to install the Microsoft WMI Tools,which are available from:

http://www.think-cell.com/wmitools

The WMI Object Browser gives you an overviewof all your system’s properties accessible throughWQL. The WMI CIM Studio lets you test WQL

queries that you develop for update.xml by pressingthis button:

Notification about license key expiration

think-cell requires a license key and can be used upto and on the expiration date of the license key.

The software will notify the user about the upcoming

expiration on every start of PowerPoint and Excel if the expiration date is less than 14 days away. If thelicense key is expiring on the 15th, 30th, 31st of amonth a notification is shown for the first time on the2nd, 17th, 18th of the same month.

The license key dialog is used to notify the user. If thelicense key has not yet expired, the message “The li-cense key of this think-cell product will expire soon.You should enter a new license key:” is shown to-gether with the expiration date. The user has thefollowing choices:

– Enter a new license key and click OK .

expired. Please enter a new license key: is shown,but clicking OK is only possible after a valid licensekey has been entered. If the dialog is dismissed us-ing Cancel think-cell remains deactivated.

To prevent the license expiration dialog from beingshown please make sure to order and deploy a new

license key more than 14 days before the expirationdate. A new license key is always valid immediatelyand not only after the expiration date of the old li-cense key. Therefore you should deploy the new li-cense key as soon as it is available.

Starting PowerPoint with think-cell enabled

or disabled

After think-cell is installed, it is enabled in Power-Point. If the user chooses to disable think-cell, it willstay disabled at the next start of PowerPoint. Option-ally, you can set the environment variable TCACTIVE

to explicitly enable or disable think-cell before start-ing PowerPoint.

You can create two batch files that serve as direct

links to PowerPoint with think-cell enabled resp. dis-abled:

1. Go to the Office directory. Depending on theversion of Office you have installed, the defaultinstallation directory is


C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office

or C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office10

or C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office11.

2. Create a new text document (right-click → New

→ Text Document).

– your customization id (a three-digit number thatis the same for all users within a corporate unit;can also be found in the About dialog),

– the program build (a five-digit number; can alsobe found in the About dialog),

http://www.think-cell.com/wmitools



3. Put in the following lines:set tcactive=1

start powerpnt.exe

(If you want think-cell to be disabled, put in 0 in-stead of 1.)

4. Rename the created file to end in .bat. Ignore thewarning about changing the file name extension.

5. Create a shortcut pointing to this file (right-clickon desktop → New → Shortcut).

Now start PowerPoint through this shortcut for think-cell to be initially enabled resp. disabled.

Online quality assurance At think-cell, we are committed to stability and ro-bustness as key factors for the professional use of our software. When an error condition arises whileyou are using think-cell, the software automaticallygenerates a report that helps us to understand theproblem and fix it in the next release.

An automatically created report contains the follow-ing information:

– date and time,

– an error code from the operating system or fromPowerPoint or Excel,

– the location in our source code (file name andline number) where the error occurred,

– a Microsoft Minidump, which is basically a stack

trace along with environment information such asoperating system version and loaded modules.Microsoft uses the same Minidump when theysend error reports,

– if desired, the machine name or its serial number,allowing your IT personnel to identify the concern-ing machine or user. We may get valuable addi-tional information if we can talk to the user whoexperienced the problem.

– or, alternatively, an anonymous Globally UniqueIdentifier (GUID), which is used to correlate mul-tiple error reports. The GUID is created when us-ing think-cell for the first time and stored together with the user’s settings. It is a random string withno connection to the machine, user or document

current at the time of creation. Using the GUID,it is only possible to determine whether two er-ror reports came from the same or from differentusers.


The error report is sent via HTTPS to the think-cellserver. Of all the information transmitted, only theMinidump, essentially memory content, could po-

tentially contain actual slide content fragments. Butin its operation, think-cell never stores actual slidecontent Storing text or images is completely left

content. Storing text or images is completely leftto PowerPoint. Therefore it is very unlikely that theMinidump of the memory used by think-cell containsany sensitive information.

You can test the error reporting mechanism by typingerrorreporttest into any textbox within PowerPoint.

A message box confirms that an error report hasbeen sent.

If automatic error reporting is disabled for your or-ganization’s version of think-cell, it can be tem-porarily enabled by typing senderrorshome into anytextbox within PowerPoint. Our support staff may askyou to do so if some problem cannot be reproduced

in our laboratory. Again, a message box confirmsthat automatic error reporting is now enabled untilPowerPoint is closed.

Automatic error reporting can also be enabled or disabled by appending one of the following REPORTS

options to the installation command line (see Initialinstallation on page 100):

REPORTS=0 Disable automatic error reporting.

REPORTS=1 Enable automatic error reporting.

Trouble shooting and critical errors

In case of critical errors the user is asked whether heor she would like to file a support request.

These support requests can also be sent manually(Trouble shooting on page 12). It is possible to

change the default e-mail address for support re-quests. Append the following parameter to the in-stallation command line (see Initial installation onpage 100):

SUPPORTEMAIL="[email protected]"


<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?><root>

<CUpdateInfo id="1"><m_vecupdscen length="2"><!-- list of 2 different update scenarios -- >

<! -- First scenario: the group of pilot users. -- ><! -- This scenario is evaluated first, and if it is executed, thesecond scenario is skipped. -- >

<elem><! Update file of this scenario : The pilot group receives

<! -- Update file of this scenario : The pilot group receivesthink-cell build 17950 -- >

<m_bstrFile>http://example.com/setup_17950.exe</m_bstrFile><! - - L i s t o f 2 c o nd i ti on s t ha t m us t _ al l_ b e m e t t o i ns t al l t he f il e - - ><m_vecupdcond length="2">

<elem><! -- WQL query that an earlier build of think-cell is

installed. The query searches the local WQL database(not the network). Thus it will either return one product

record, if an older product is installed, or none otherwise. -- ><m_bstrQuery>select * from Win32_Product where Name='think-cell' andVersion<'1.17.950.0'</m_bstrQuery>

<! -- The number of returned records is now numerically compared:- 2 s t a nd s f or l es s t ha n , - 1 f o r l es s o r e q u al ; 0 f or e qu al ;1 f or g r ea te r o r e qu al ; 2 f or g r ea t er t ha n - - >

<m_eupdcondop val="0"/><! -- Compare to numerical value 1 -- ><m_nCount val="1"/>

</elem><elem>

<! -- WQL query that the computer system is named ANNA, TOM or FRANK (the group of pilot users). Again, the query

is executed locally, returning either one computer s ys te m ( t he o ne t he q ue ry i s r un n in g o n) o r n o n e . - - ><m_bstrQuery>select * from Win32_ComputerSystem where Name='ANNA' or

Name='TOM' or Name='FRANK'</m_bstrQuery><! - - n um be r o f r e tu r ne d r ec or d s e qu al t o 1 - - ><m_eupdcondop val="0"/><m_nCount val="1"/>

</elem></m_vecupdcond>

</elem><elem><!-- Second scenario: all other users. -- >

<! -- All other users receive think-cell build 17883. -- ><m_bstrFile>http://example.com/setup_17883.exe</m_bstrFile><! - - L i s t o f 1 c o nd i ti o n t h a t m u st b e m e t t o i n s ta ll t he f il e - - ><m_vecupdcond length="1">

<elem><m_bstrQuery>select * from Win32_Product where Name='think-cell' and

Version<'1.17.883.0'</m_bstrQuery><! - - n um be r o f r e tu r ne d r ec or d s e qu al t o 1 - - ><m_eupdcondop val="0"/><m_nCount val="1"/>

</elem></m_vecupdcond>

</elem></m_vecupdscen>

</CUpdateInfo></root>

Figure A.1 Example of an update.xml file

B. Exchanging files with PowerPoint



This chapter covers some issues that arise when

your coworkers use PowerPoint without think-cell in-stalled.

Loading files from think-cell in PowerPoint

Any files created by PowerPoint with think-cell in-stalled are 100% compatible with PowerPoint. Thismeans that coworkers or customers who do not

have think-cell installed, can open and edit the fileswithout noticing any difference. The smart-elements(think-cell shapes) created with think-cell appear asregular PowerPoint shapes such as textboxes andMicrosoft Graph objects.

Although think-cell requires PowerPoint XP or later torun, files that have been created using think-cell canbe opened in PowerPoint 97 Service Release 1. If

rows of quotation marks appear in some textboxes,then Service Release 1 or later must be installed.Find the latest updates for Microsoft Office installa-tions at:

http://office.microsoft.com/officeupdate

Reimporting smart-elements from

PowerPoint

Consider the following scenario:

1. A presentation has been created using Power-Point with think-cell installed, and contains smart-elements.

2. The same presentation has been edited in Power-Point without think-cell, and some of the shapesthat are part of a smart-element have been al-tered.

3. Now, you want to use think-cell again to further modify the smart-elements.

In this scenario, when you attempt to select a smart-element that has been altered without think-cell, thesoftware will recognize the smart-element as incon-

sistent and display the following message box:

Exchanging files with PowerPoint 112

If you decide to use Manually carry over changes to think-

cell, then the following toolbar is displayed, lettingyou compare slides containing the alternative ver-

sions of the smart-element:

http://office.microsoft.com/officeupdate



In order to proceed, you will need to decide whether to continue using the PowerPoint edited version with-out think-cell functionality or to reimport the smart-element to think-cell.

You should carefully consider the following conse-quences before making your decision:

– Manually carry over changes to think-cell reimports the

smart-element to think-cell and restores the intelli-gent smart-element functionality, but discards allchanges made without think-cell. If you wish topreserve any of the changes then they must bemanually re-applied to the smart-element.

– Continue editing without think-cell functionality contin-ues to use the PowerPoint edited version and en-sures that all changes are preserved. The intelli-

gent smart-element functionality, however, is lostand standard PowerPoint tools must be used tofurther edit these shapes and objects.

The toolbar lets you quickly and easily view the slidescontaining the PowerPoint and think-cell versions of the smart-element.

You may want to compare the smart-element withthe PowerPoint version and compare and copy, for

example, data values to reflect any changes that youwish to preserve in the think-cell version.

Having made any necessary changes, click the Done

button to remove the PowerPoint version from thepresentation and end the reimport process.

C. Programming think-cell



Some functions of think-cell can be accessed pro-

grammatically. The interface is integrated into theOffice Automation model, so it can be accessedfrom any language with which you can program Of-fice, such as Visual Basic for Applications or C#. Allsamples in this chapter are written in Visual Basic for

Applications, but can be easily ported to other lan-guages.

The entry point into think-cell is the think-cell

add-in object. It can be accessed via theApplication.COMAddIns collection. Calls intothink-cell are always late-bound. See Microsoft’sknowledge base for an explanation:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/245115

Thus, the type of the think-cell add-in object is simplyObject, and there is no type library or reference to

add. Just acquire the object, and you are ready tomake calls:

Dim tcaddin As ObjectS et t c ad d in = _

Application.COMAddIns("thinkcell.addin").Object

The following sections describe the available func-

tionality.

UpdateChart

UpdateChart Name property control

Available in the floating toolbar for a chart (see For-matting and style on page 24), you can set an arbi-trary, unique name to identify the chart when calling

the function UpdateChart to update the data for thechart.

Signature

tcaddin.UpdateChart( _pres As PowerPoint.Presentation, _strName As String, _rgData As Excel.Range, _bTransposed As Boolean _

)

Description

This function updates the chart strName in pres withthe numbers contained in rgData.

Programming think-cell 114

The chart name strName is matched case-insensitive.It must have been previously assigned in Power-Point using the UpdateChart Name property control

described above.If the chart is linked to any Excel data range wheninvoking this funtion the link is broken. Afterwards

Call tcaddin.UpdateChart(pres, "ChartNo1", rng, No)

' Save the updated presentation pres.SaveAs ("c:\\example_updated.pptx")pres.Close

ppapp.QuitEnd Sub

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/245115



v g wthe chart will not be linked to any Excel range.

Example

' T o u se t hi s s am pl e , g o t o T oo ls - R ef e re nc e s' and add the Microsoft PowerPoint Object Library.Sub UpdateChart_Sample()

' Get the range containing the new data Dim rng As Excel.RangeS e t r n g = _

ActiveWorkbook.Sheets("Sheet1").Range("A1:D5")

' Get the think-cell add-in objectDim tcaddin As ObjectS et t c ad d in = _


' G et a P o we r Po i nt i ns t an c e. H ol d o n t o t hi s' o b je ct a s l o n g a s y ou w an t t o a cc es s t he

' generated presentations. There can only be a ' single PowerPoint instance. If there is no' PowerPoint running, one will be started.' Otherwise the existing one is used.Dim ppapp As ObjectSet ppapp = PowerPoint.Application

Dim pres As PowerPoint.Presentation

' PowerPoint window visible' Set pres = ppapp.Presentations.Open( _' Filename:="c:\\example.pptx", Untitled:=msoTrue)

' PowerPoint window invisibleSet pres = ppapp.Presentations.Open( _

Filename:="c:\\example.pptx", Untitled:=msoTrue, _WithWindow:=msoFalse)

' The name "ChartNo1" must have been ' previously assigned to the chart using ' the control in the floating toolbar

PresentationFromTemplate

Signature

tcaddin.PresentationFromTemplate( _wb As Excel.Workbook, _strTemplate As String, _ppapp As PowerPoint.Application _

) As PowerPoint.Presentation

Description

This function applies any data links in wb to the tem-plate with filename strTemplate. The result is a newpresentation within the PowerPoint instance ppapp.

strTemplate can either be a full path or a relative

path, which is then taken to be relative to the loca-tion of the Excel workbook file wb.

All charts in strTemplate that are linked to the Excelworkbook wb are updated (regardless whether theyare set to auto-update or not). Then their datalinks are broken to prevent further changes to thesecharts.

Charts in strTemplate which are linked to Excel

workbooks other than wb are left unchanged andstill linked, so it is possible to update links frommultiple Excel workbooks by saving the result of thisfunction as a new template and then calling thisfunction again with the next workbook.

Programming think-cell 115

If you want to control the colors of chart segmentswith the Excel link, you can set the color scheme toUse Excel Fill (see Color scheme on page 25). Like-

wise, to control the number format with the Excellink, set it to Excel Format (see Number format onpage 33). Make sure to set the background color

d h b f f h ll

' Generate a new presentation based on the' linked template.Dim pres As PowerPoint.PresentationSet pres = tcaddin.PresentationFromTemplate( _

Excel.ActiveWorkbook, "template.ppt", ppapp)

' I f y ou w an t t o m od i fy t he n ew p r es e nt a ti o n ' b e fo re s a vi ng i t t h i s i s t he p la ce t o d o i t .

' Save the new presentation



and the number format of the respective cells inExcel before calling PresentationFromTemplate.

Example

' T o u se t hi s s am pl e , g o t o T oo ls - R ef e re nc e s

' and add the Microsoft PowerPoint Object Library.

Sub PresentationFromTemplate_Sample()' G et t he r an ge t o m o d if y . I t i s m o r e e f fi c ie n t' t o d o t hi s o nc e r at he r t ha n w i th in t he l oo p .Dim rng As Excel.RangeS e t r n g = _

ActiveWorkbook.Sheets("Sheet1").Cells(3, 2)

' Get the think-cell add-in objectDim tcaddin As ObjectS et t c ad d in = _


' G et a P o we r Po i nt i ns t an c e. H ol d o n t o t hi s' o b je ct a s l o n g a s y ou w an t t o a cc es s t he' generated presentations. There can only be a ' single PowerPoint instance. If there is no' PowerPoint running, one will be started.' Otherwise the existing one is used.Dim ppapp As ObjectSet ppapp = New PowerPoint.Application

D im i A s I n te ge rF o r i = 1 T o 1 0

' Modify the range value.

' Note: Avoid selecting the cell prior to' c ha n gi ng i t . I t i s v e r y s l o w a n d h as' undesirable side-effects.' B AD :' rng.Select' ActiveWindow.Selection.Value = 0 rng.Value = i

Save the new presentation pres.SaveAs "c:\\output" & i & ".ppt"

' Explicitly close the presentation when we' a re d on e w i t h i t t o f r e e i t s m em o ry .' L e tt in g t he o bj ec t g o o u t o f s c o pe i s n o t' sufficient.pres.Close

Next

End Sub

D. Keyboard shortcuts



Most keyboard shortcuts that you know from plain

PowerPoint work with smart-elements as well. Thesame is true for keys that modify mouse operationlike

£

¢

¡Shift ⇑-click for additive selection and

£

¢

¡Ctrl-drag for

duplication of shapes.

The following table shows the keyboard shortcutsfrequently used with think-cell, and the ones thatoffer additional functionality over Microsoft Power-Point.

Shortcut key Description

£¢ ¡

F2 Toggle text-edit mode in text labels

£

¢

¡Delete or

£

¢

¡

– Delete the selected smart-element– Remove the selected feature (e.g., label)

£

¢

¡ Alt +£

¢

¡←

£

¢

¡→

£

¢

¡↑

£

¢

¡↓

– Move focus across shapes on the slide– Move focus across features (e.g., labels) of

a smart-element

£

¢

¡ Alt +

£

¢

¡Insert Gantt chart only: Insert new activity

£

¢

¡

v ,£

¢

¡

x Checkbox only: set state

£

¢

¡0£

¢

¡1

£

¢

¡2

£

¢

¡3

£

¢

¡4 Harvey ball only: set state

£

¢

¡ Alt +

£

¢

¡

In Excel data sheet: line break

£

¢

¡F7 In Excel data sheet: spell checking

Middle mouse button:click and drag

In zoom view: Grab the slide and pan it around

Index



100% chart, 37

– 100% indicator, 48100% cost curve, 54

activity (Gantt chart), 64 API– overview, 113– PresentationFromTemplate, 114– UpdateChart, 113application programming interface, see APIarea 100% chart, 39area chart, 39

arithmetic mean, see value linearrow– CAGR, 47– difference, 45automatic update, 12average line, see value lineaxis, see value axis, see logarithmic scale, see secondary axis

Background Intelligent Transfer Service, see BITSbar (Gantt chart), 67

bar chart, see column chart– 100%, see 100% chart– clustered, see clustered chartbaseline break, 45BITS, 106bracket (Gantt chart), 67break

– baseline, 45

– category axis, 45– value axis, 42bridge chart, see waterfall chartbubble chart, 57, 59butterfly chart, 36

CAGR, 47– for series, 48case code, 92case path, 92category axis break, 45

category difference arrow, 46changing fonts, 92changing the language, 92checkbox, 66Chinese conversion, 29clustered chart, 36clustered stacked chart, 36color control, 24color scheme control, 25column– break between, 45– break within, 42– gap between, 44column chart, 36– 100%, see 100% chart– clustered, see clustered chart– insertion, 14

117

Index 118

– label content, 34– simple, 36– stacked, 36– waterfall, 51

combination chart, 40comparable scales, see same scalecompatibility, 111connector

l /b 49

– installation, 100– online quality assurance, 108– prerequisites, 100– update scripting, 106

difference arrow, 45– category, 46– segment, 46double prime, see primes in numbers



– column/bar, 49– series, 49– universal, 49– waterfall, 52controls, see property controlscrosses at categories, 41

crosses between categories, 41customization, 26, 73

data links, see Exceldata links dialog, 83data sheet, 17– and text, 32– data entry, 27– flip columns, 29– flip rows, 29– reverse data order, 29

– transpose, 28– waterfall, 51date format control, 71decoration– 100% indicator, 48– CAGR, 47– category axis break, 45– difference arrow, 45– series connector, 49– universal connector, 49

– value axis, 40– value axis break, 42– value line, 48default colors, 26deployment, 100– batch file, 107

enable/disable on start, 107error bars, 38error reporting, 13, 108Excel– chart data entry, 27

– create chart from, 80– data links, 80– group and outline, 86– hidden cells, 86– rounding, see think-cell round– transpose linked data, 81– update data link, 82

feature– layout settings, 17– remove, 22

– selection, 17, 22file name, see case codefiles, 101flip columns, see data sheetflip rows, see data sheetfont control, 33Frequently Asked Questions, see trouble shooting

Gantt chart, see project timelinegap, 44group policies, 103growth arrow, see difference arrow

Harvey ball, 66

identifier, see case codeinsert symbol, see special characters

Index 119

inside label, 31installation, 10, 100– default directory, 10, 100– download, 10

– files, see files– firm-wide, see deployment– first steps, 10– group policies, see group policies

parameters

– types of labels, 30label content control, 34language dependency, 71legend, 50

license key, 11line chart, 37line color, 25line scheme control, 25line style control 25



– parameters– – ALLUSERS, 101– – LICENSEKEY, 101– – REPORTS, 109– – RIBBONPPGROUPINSERT, 104– – RIBBONPPTABINSERT, 104

– – RIBBONPPXMLNS, 104– – RIBBONXLGROUPINSERT, 104– – RIBBONXLTABINSERT, 104– – RIBBONXLXMLNS, 104– – TARGETDIR, 100– – UPDATESURL, 106– registry, see registry– requirements, 10– ribbon, see ribbon– trouble shooting, 12interpolate, 39

invalid license key, see license key

keyboard shortcuts, see shortcut keys

label, 16, 30– adding text, 32– automatic placement, 31– content, 34– context menu buttons, 30– font, 33– inside, 31– manual placement, 31– number format, 33– paste multi-selection, 35– rotate, 32– segment, 31– selection, 22

line style control, 25logarithmic scale, 44

macros– security warning, 11magnitude, 34

marimekko, see Mekko chartmarker scheme control, 26marker shape control, 26Mekko chart, 54– ridge, 55– with %-axis, 54– with units, 55Microsoft OLE, 87milestone (Gantt chart), 67msiexec, 100Multi-selection, 23, 35

#NUM– Excel error value, 98number format control, 33

Object Linking and Embedding, see Microsoft OLEOffice 97, see PowerPoint 97online quality assurance, 13, 108outlines, 25

panning, 23

partition, 60percent of datasheet 100%=, 53pie chart, 56PowerPoint files, 111PowerPoint 97, 111precision control, see number format control

Index 120

primes in numbers, 34programming think-cell, see APIproject timeline, 61property controls, 33

– color, 24– color scheme, 25– font, 33– label content, 34– line scheme 25

– CAGR, 48setup, see installationsetup.exe, see msiexecshade (Gantt chart), 67

shortcut keys– navigation, 23– overview, 116Simplified Chinese, 29single prime see primes in numbers



– line scheme, 25– line style, 25– marker scheme, 26– marker shape, 26– number format, 33– sorting, 25

quality assurance, 13

registry, 102reverse data order, see data sheetribbon, 104ridge, 55rotation, 21rounding– addends and totals, see think-cell round– numbers in charts, see number format control

row (Gantt chart), 64

same scale, 43save and send selected slides, 91scale (Gantt chart), 63scale (numeric), see value axisscatter chart, 57, 58scatter chart with lines, see line chartsecondary axis, 44security– encrypted error reporting, 13, 108– security warning at first start, 11– signed executables, 12segment difference arrow, 46selecting, 22selection of multiple features, see Multi-selectionseries

single prime, see primes in numberssmart-elements– resizing, 21smoothed lines, 38snapping, 15sorting control, 25

special characters, 91stacked clustered chart, 36submarine chart, 55support– automatic update, 12– online quality assurance, 13– trouble shooting, 12symbols, see special characters

TCACTIVE environment variable, 107TCROUND Excel formula, 95

TCROUNDDOWN Excel formula, 95TCROUNDNEAR Excel formula, 95TCROUNDUP Excel formula, 95text field, 32– label content, 34– number format, 33think-cell ribbon, 20think-cell round, 93think-cell toolbar, 20tickmarks, 40

timeline chart, see project timelinetoolbar, 14, 24toolbar controls, see property controlsTraditional Chinese, 29trendline, 59trouble shooting, 12

Index 121

update– automatic, 12– scripting, see deploymentupdate server, 106

update.xml, 106

value axis, 40– break, 42– crossing behavior, 42



crossing behavior, 42– gridlines, 41– same scale, 43– tickmark labels, 41– tickmarks, 41– title, 41

#VALUE– Excel error value, 97value line, 48variable, see text fieldvisual basic, see API

waterfall– chart, 51– connector, 52weighted mean, see value line

y-axis, see value axis

zoom– panning, 23

manualThink-cell chart 5.3.pdf

Documents

Transcript of manualThink-cell chart 5.3.pdf