How does the Resize ratio work?

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Written by Emmanuelle | Updated

UpSlide's Resize ratio automatically resizes images exported from Excel to PowerPoint/Word. Its value can be found in the UpSlide Settings in the Export tab.

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You may be looking for this article because you noticed the ratio in PowerPoint isn't equal to the one found in your settings. The ratio in this example is 1, but the visual exported as a Scale in PowerPoint of 98%.

Excel units and conversion

When a visual is retrieved from Excel to be exported, the unit used by default is not cm or inch, like in PowerPoint or Word. One unit of column width is equal to the width of one character in the Normal style. 

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To find the size of a column in inches or cm in Excel, go to View > Page Layout and right-click on the column to select Column Width.

The default unit used in Excel makes it necessary to convert the visual's size before exporting it to PowerPoint or Word. Variation in the conversion can come from:

  • Rounding up values to take into account the width of cell borders.
  • Accommodating different rendering technologies used between Excel, PowerPoint and Word.

In an Excel file where the column width is 1,90cm, the Original Width found in PowerPoint's Format Picture pane for a one-column table is 1,91cm because of the rounding of value borders. The Width displayed in the end found in Scale is 1,86cm because of rendering technologies used during the export. 

The way borders affect the Original Width is magnified when inserting a table with more columns. In the example below, the 10-column table has an Original Width of 18,67cm.

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UpSlide's ratio

The definition of UpSlide ratio is "When exporting from Excel to PPT or Word, an image is created. UpSlide will apply this ratio to the source data in Excel to compute its size.".

The expected size in PowerPoint should therefore be based on the size of the visual in Excel. The Scale shown in PowerPoint's Format Picture pane is the ratio calculated between the Original size and Size.

Applying UpSlide's ratio of 1 while taking into account cell borders in the example above explains the one-column's Original Width of 1,9cm.

The final size recognized by PowerPoint is 1,86cm. The Scale Width percentage is calculated as such:

1,86 / 1,90 = 0,9738 rounded up to 98%