Using MSGraph with PowerPoint 2007 (MS Graph, Charts)

If you're going back and forth between 2007 and 2003, and editing charts is a consideration, you really want to stick with MS Graph charts. MS Graph is the chart format that's native to PowerPoint 2003 and all previous versions. It's what you get when you insert a chart.

In PPT 2007, when you insert a chart, it automatically inserts an Excel chart. As long as you're going to stick strictly with Office 2007 and don't need to use VB/VBA or some other programming language to manipulate the charts, that's fine. Otherwise, you'll want to stick with MS Graph charts instead.

To do this, you'll need to change the registry:

• Quit PowerPoint if it's running
• Navigate to this folder in the registry: HKEY_CURRENT_USER/SOFTWARE/MICROSOFT/OFFICE/12.0/Common/Charting/
  (Change the 13.0 to 14.0 for Office 2010 or 15.0 for Office 2013)
• Choose Edit, New, Dword
• RegEdit inserts a new value and leaves it highlighted for you to rename. Type MSGraphEnable. If you clicked off the new value, you'll need to rightclick it and choose Rename, then type the new name.
• Now doubleclick MSGraphEnable and set the data value to 1 in the dialog box that appears.
• Click OK to close the dialog box then quit RegEdit.

Now you can restart PowerPoint and test the new setting. After you've made this change:

• PowerPoint won't prompt the to convert existing MSGraph charts when you double-click them. It simply treats it as earlier PPT versions normally treat MSGraph charts.
• When you insert a new chart or click the chart icon in a content placeholder, PowerPoint inserts an MSGraph chart rather than the new-style Excel ones.
• PowerPoint won't convert MSGraph charts if the user opens a legacy document and clicks on OfficeButton, Convert.

If you quit PowerPoint and change the registry value back to 0 before re-starting, PowerPoint will revert to it's previous behavior.

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