HOW TO | TRANSFER CHARTS AND SLIDES BETWEEN DOCUMENTS
1 Copy charts from Numbers
It doesn’t matter which application you started in, you can copy an editable chart – complete with data set – between all three iWork applications. In most cases, however, your chart will probably originate in Numbers.
To copy a chart from Numbers to a Pages document or Keynote presentation, you only need to select the actual chart itself – click on it, and verify the entire chart is highlighted, not just a small part of it. Right-click and choose Copy, then switch to your Pages or Keynote document, select where you’d like to place the chart and choose Edit > Paste.
You see your chart appear as a floating element in your document, allowing you to click and drag it into place. Open the Format Inspector’s Arrange tab to control how other elements flow around it, plus whether it’s fixed to the page.
2 Edit chart data
The data in this pasted chart can be edited directly from Pages or Keynote. Just click the Edit Chart Data button to change the values and figures, allowing you to update and customise the chart manually should you need to. It’s worth noting that changes you make in one document no longer affect the chart in another – previous versions of Numbers automatically pasted a ‘linked’ version of the chart, allowing you to make changes then sync them between documents.
If being able to keep chart data in sync across documents is a must, you need to revert to iWork 09 for now – if it was previously installed on your Mac, you’ll find it in the Applications\iWork 09 folder. When you copy and paste a chart in iWork 09, you find an Update button appears next to the chart, allowing you to refresh it with any changes made in another version. There’s also an Unlink button.
In iWork 5, the simplest way to update your chart after making changes in Numbers is to delete the original copy then paste in the updated chart. If you’ve only made minor tweaks, it’s quicker to just edit the chart data manually.
If you generate your chart in Keynote or Pages, copy and paste it into Numbers, but be careful where you paste the chart. Like text and images, if you’ve selected a cell it’s pasted inside that as a non-editable image, scaled to fit the cell. Paste it as a floating object and you see that, unlike Pages and Keynote, the data set is pasted as a separate floating table to the chart itself. Both remain connected, and you can cut and paste the table to another sheet if you wish.
3 Paste as a graphic
When you create a chart in Numbers and then copy it across to Keynote or Pages, it’s rendered as a vector graphics object, which allows you to scale it to any size. If, on the other hand, you want to copy and paste the chart as a simple noneditable graphic, things get more complicated.
In Numbers 09, you could generate a vector-based image of the chart simply by copying it, then opening Preview and choosing File > New from Clipboard. Now, however, this produces a low resolution rasterised image that quickly degrades should you try to blow it up.
If you want to produce a much higher quality image, there’s a convoluted workaround you can follow. First, output your Numbers document as a PDF: choose File > Print, and then click the Print button. Make sure ‘Best graphics’ is selected under Presets, and then click the PDF drop-down menu and choose Open PDF in Preview.
Once Preview opens, select Tools > Rectangular Selection, then click and drag around the chart you wish to copy. Adjust the selection using its drag handles if necessary, then rightclick the selection and choose Copy. Now select File > New from Clipboard to create a vector copy of the chart, which you can save as a PDF file. Finally, drag the generated PDF file from Finder into your document window to import the chart as a graphic – it’s still rasterised, but the quality is much higher, allowing you to scale it up significantly.
4 Transfer Keynote slides
Want to copy and paste a slide into your Pages document or Numbers spreadsheet? You have two options. Simply paste a non-editable image of the slide into your other document, select its thumbnail from the Slides pane, right-click and choose Copy, and then paste it across. Although you can’t obviously edit its content, you can resize, crop and frame it like any other image.
To copy across a slide in fully editable form, select content from the actual slide itself, then copy and paste that across instead. Consider grouping the various text frames and media objects before you copy them, to make it easier to keep the slide’s elements together while you place them in your Pages or Numbers document before making any edits.