I take ages to draw the chart

[nsv]

This is a combined Excel / Power Point problem

I have made a series of charts to show how a normal distribution develops as the samples increase in number.
To illustrate the sample nature I make the them as column charts with the fill effect of a picture of an 'x' stacked and scaled to 1 unit/picture. I have in a very simple matter drawn the picture of the 'x' in the Paintbrush program.
There are 4 charts illustrating the sample sizes 20, 100, 1000 and 4000 x's.

The problem is that the charts illustrating the larger samples of 1000 and 4000 takes ages to redraw every time I move the cursor. This is (more or less) acceptable as long as I work with them in Excel, but they continue to be slow in redrawing also when I export them to Power Point, where I need to move them around on the sheet in order to locate them very precicely.

The picture of the 'x' is made as small as possible (1-2 kB) and I have tried both .jpg and .bmp, but they are both equally slow.

I have tried to export them both as enhanced metafile and as an Excel Chart Object but without any difference.

I can import the pictures as .jpg, but then a lot of detail disappears. OK, I know the devil is in the details, but a lot of other pictures in the power point show are also generated in Excel with a lot of detail and they do not require long redrawing times.

The computer is a new professional laptop, with lots of power. It is strange that my privat computer, a very cheap bamboo clone, actually works faster on this worksheet, so I imagine there must be some setup somewhere in the computer that makes it react as it does.

Anyone has a clue?

NSV

[Andy Pope]

Do the charts need to be inter active once created? You could create images of your charts.

As for pc specs, the important part with this problem would be the graphics card. Laptops usually have low powered graphics chips.

[nsv]

They do not need to be interactive; I just want a picture of a lot of crosses, but they act as if they have to start up Excel and make it calculate the NORMDIST function and painstakingly paint the picture of an 'x' 4000 times.

I found that while most of the other Excel generated graph-pictures in the power point show are normal, then a few are slow on this computer as if they need to run the calculation in Excel every time they are being shown. They operated without any hesitation on other, much older and slower computers - including my own private <1000 US$ laptop.

What is "enhanced metafile"?


NSV

[Andy Pope]

In excel select the chart whilst holding the shift key.
Keep the shift key pressed and use menu Edit > Copy Picture.

Paste the picture in PowerPoint.


Info on metafile.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Metafile

[nsv]

Yes! - and paste as bitmap. If pasted as picture it remains slow, but this solution works.
I tried both bitmap and .jpg before this, but I could only do it by going via Word with an unacceptable loss of details.

I just wonder about the few other chart-pictures from that same power point that have turned slow on this computer. They are not nearly as slow, but still it is strange why they change behaviour.

Anyway - thanks a lot Andy for this tip, it helped me a great deal!

(SHIFT-Edit - indeed, how did you ever think of this combination!!)

NSV

[Andy Pope]

Not sure who discovered SHIFT-EDIT, but not me. I'm only passing on the knowledge

[nsv]

Argh!!! - the IT-people just ran an update of some NVIDIA thing or whatever, some screen driver thing, and now it is even slower and almost impossible to work with. And that is not only in Power Point, but also in Excel itself.

NSV