Gantt Chart & Timeline Center

WORKING WITH MICROSOFT OFFICE (cont'd)

Paste Special
Another way to transfer a SmartDraw drawing to another Windows^®-based program is to paste an OLE Link using the other program's Paste Special command usually found under the Edit menu or tab.

Because Paste Special creates a link between the other program and th original SmartDraw file, any changes you make to the original SmartDraw drawing will automatically appear in the drawing pasted elsewhere.

To use Paste Special, first save the drawing in SmartDraw (pasting a link will not work if the file is not saved first), then select and copy your SmartDraw drawing. In the other program, under Paste Special select Paste Link.

About OLE Linking
OLE linking creates a shortcut between the drawing in another program and the original SmartDraw file. When you simply copied-and-pasted (embedded) the drawing, the other program only remembered that the drawing came from SmartDraw but not the particular file it came from.

When you paste a link to the actual SmartDraw file, any changes to the original drawing will be automatically reflected in the linked drawing.

This feature can be a real time-saver if you need to use a single SmartDraw drawing in many different Microsoft Office^® documents.

For example, let's say you want to always keep an updated version of your flowchart in three different corporate documents simultaneously: a Word^® document, a PowerPoint^® presentation, and an Excel^® spreadsheet. You need not update all three documents. Just update the linked SmartDraw drawing, and the documents will all automatically update themselves!

Continue to read seven tips for effective Gantt charts