Linking in Presentations eliminates the risk of conflicting values in your financial documents. Links create a relationship between information that ensures that a data point is consistent no matter where or how it’s displayed.
Data can be linked directly into charts, tables and text in Presentations. This gives you the flexibility to report data in any format and customize your display to your audience.
Understanding Source Links
The primary point for a particular data point is called a source link. This is the root from which all other instances of that data stem. Dates, text, and numeric values should be linked to a source value when they appear multiple times in one or more documents that are updated regularly.
Source links are indicated with a blue triangle in the upper left-hand corner of cells in a table, or with a blue underline for data in texts.
Linking to Slide Content
To create a link from a source value in a spreadsheet or a document to a value in a Presentation, copy the value by selecting and using the right-click menu. If you copy a range to paste into a table, you can select just the top cell in the range or the top left cell in a block of values before pasting.
Copy and paste source links to another destination to create destination links. Paste the value(s) into the Presentation in a new location or over other values.
Choose an appropriate option from the clipboard and click Apply. The options displayed depend on the type of data copied to the clipboard.
Updates to the source value or text will flow to all destination links. Then choose the appropriate options from the clipboard that appears.
Destination links are indicated in green with a triangle in the upper left hand corner in a cell or an underline in text. Many users maintain source links in a Wdesk spreadsheet, Wdesk documents or from tables in other presentations.
Using the Link Properties Panel
The Link Properties panel shows the details of a link, including the source location, and all the destination locations. The history of link changes is also documented in the panel, creating a comprehensive audit trail detailing who made changes, what was changed, and when the changes occurred for all links.
Linking saves time, allows you to make last-minute changes, and greatly reduces the risk of errors in your documents.
Restrictions on Moving Source Links
Some common causes for not being able to move a source link include:
- The document or section containing that source link is not open in Wdesk.
- Someone else is editing the document or section containing the source link.
- You have changed the source of the same link group already without sharing.
- Source links can not be moved from text to text.