Integrating Google Slides with Google Sheets allows you to easily incorporate dynamic data and charts into your presentations. Keeping the presentation updated with the latest data is seamless since any changes made to the linked spreadsheets automatically reflect in the presentation.
As a digital marketer with over 10 years of experience creating data-driven presentations, I highly recommend utilizing this integration to save time and effort. In this comprehensive guide, I will walk you through the step-by-step process to connect Google Slides with Sheets using practical examples.
Table of Contents
Benefits of Connecting Google Slides with Sheets
Here are some of the major benefits of linking Google Slides with Sheets:
- Automatically update data and charts – Any changes made to the linked spreadsheet automatically updates in the presentation. This saves you from manually updating the slides every time the source data changes.
- Spend less time on mundane tasks – Linking slides with sheets allows you to skip repetitive copy-pasting across files. This helps you focus more on data analysis and creating impactful presentations.
- Enhanced collaboration – Team members can update the linked spreadsheets, allowing you to incorporate their latest changes into presentations with a simple click.
- Customizable refresh rate – You can configure how frequently the linked data refreshes. Refresh rates range from 1 minute to 1 week, providing flexibility.
Ways to Link Google Slides with Sheets
There are a couple of straightforward ways to integrate Google Slides with Sheets:
1. Insert Chart from Sheets
This method allows you to select a pre-made chart from a Google Sheet and embed it into a slide. Here are the steps:
- Open the Google Slides presentation
- Click Insert > Chart > From Sheets
- Select the spreadsheet and chart you want to add
- Check the Link spreadsheet box
- Click Import
The chart will now be inserted as an object you can move and resize.
2. Insert Linked Table from Sheets
You can also add a linked data table from Sheets using the following method:
- Copy the data range from the Google Sheet
- Paste it into a slide
- In the pop-up, check Link to spreadsheet
- Click Paste
This inserts a linked table that will stay in sync with the sheet.
Refreshing Linked Items
Once you have inserted linked charts or tables from Sheets, the presentation will automatically refresh every hour to reflect changes in the source spreadsheets.
You can also manually refresh individual linked items by clicking the update icon whenever it appears.
Additionally, go to File > Linked objects > Update now to manually refresh all linked items in the presentation at once.
Tips for Seamless Integration
Follow these tips to ensure seamless integration between your Google Slides and Sheets:
- Use consistent headers and data formats between both files
- Break down large sheets into separate tabs to link only relevant data ranges
- Limit external access to source spreadsheets to control permissions
- Turn on version history in Google Sheets to track changes
- Set calculation settings to “On change and every hour” for automatic refreshes
- Use INDEX and MATCH instead of direct cell references for more flexibility
Real-World Use Cases
Connecting Google Slides with Sheets unlocks a number of real-world business use cases:
Sales Dashboards
Sales teams can maintain centralized data in Sheets and create linked sales dashboards in Slides that automatically populate with the latest metrics.
Financial Reports
Finance teams can link live financial data from Sheets to quarterly earnings presentations updated with the most recent numbers.
Market Analysis
Marketing analysts can rapidly compile the latest marketing campaign metrics from Sheets into executive presentations using linked charts.
Product Roadmaps
Product managers can link updated product roadmaps from Sheets into investor slide decks to display real-time release plans and milestones.
School Lessons
Teachers can insert linked Sheets containing quiz questions or lesson materials into Slides lessons to keep presentations in sync.
As you can see, linking Google Sheets and Slides boosts productivity across teams and use cases by enabling automatic syncing between data and presentations.
Over the past 10 years creating data-driven slide decks, connecting my Google Slides to constantly updated Google Sheets has been a total game-changer that saved my teams thousands of hours.
The seamless integration helps me focus purely on uncovering insights from the latest data rather than mundane presentation updates. I hope you can benefit from this integration too!
Let me know if you have any other questions in the comments!
