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Loading...Today, we are going to explore how you can quickly create Harvey balls within PowerPoint using think-cell. Before we explore how to do so, let’s do a quick recap about what Harvey balls are, and where think-cell fits within the picture. Harvey balls are round ideograms or pictograms that show different states of a ball with quarters added or subtracted to attain five states between start and completion. They have been named after Harvey L. Poppel, who started using them in the 1970s. They are often used in business reports, documents, and presentations because they show progressive data at a quick glance.
We have a detailed article on Harvey balls, which also tells you how you can create them in PowerPoint.
Now, about think-cell. This is an amazing PowerPoint add-in that helps you create charts, tables, and graphics within PowerPoint, with many more capabilities and possibilities than using PowerPoint alone.
So, if you can create Harvey balls in PowerPoint, then why use think-cell? There are two reasons. Firstly, it’s easier and completely editable. Secondly, if you already have think-cell, you might as well use it to create and insert customizable Harvey balls.
So, let’s get started. Make sure think-cell is installed. If you do not use think-cell, a trial version is available that you can download from their site.
Yes, think-cell is available on both Windows and Mac. To install, you need PowerPoint installed on your Windows or Mac computer.
To insert a Harvey ball on your slide using think-cell. you first access the Insert tab of the Ribbon in PowerPoint. If you have think-cell installed and active, you will find the think-cell group, as you can highlighted in red within Figure 1, below.
Figure 1: think-cell group in the Insert tab
Next, click the large Elements button, as shown in Figure 2, below, to reveal a dropdown menu with many options. We will choose the Harvey Ball option you see highlighted in red within Figure 2.
Figure 2: Choose the Harvey Ball option
Once you click this Harvey Ball option, your cursor changes into a crosshair cursor with a box. You can drag and resize the box as you place it, but it’s easy to change the size later, so let’s just single-click anywhere on the slide, and you will see that think-cell has already placed a small Harvey ball.
Let us first click on the Harvey ball to bring up the floating think-cell palette. We will now change to a larger font size, such as 28. Although 28 may seem like the largest font size available, you can type in a larger size as needed. As you can see, we typed in 44 points here, and that resulted in a much larger Harvey ball. Let’s make this even larger so that you can get a better preview of any changes we make. The font size is now changed to 100 points.
Let’s resize the box as needed. The next choice you need to make is about how many segments you want to use as a base for the Harvey ball. Typically, 4 segments are what is used so that each segment denotes 25%. This is also the default option.
To try more than 4 segments, let me add another Harvey ball. This is easily achieved by clicking on the + key on the bottom, or in any other direction. As you can see, we have two similar Harvey balls.
Now, we can change from 4 segments to 2 segments, 3 segments, or 8 segments. Let’s choose eight segments.
Now let us add three more Harvey balls in the top row, and seven more in the bottom row.
We will now change the number of filled-in segments in individual Harvey balls. To do so, let’s click on the second Harvey ball here and change the number of filled-in segments to two. Similarly, we will change the number of filled-in segments in the other Harvey balls to three and four.
In the bottom row, we will follow an easier process, Rather than bringing up the menu, just double-click to add more segments. did the same but ended up working with up to eight filled-in segments in each Harvey ball.
Once you filled in all segments, another double-click results in an empty Harvey ball, devoid of any segments. Double-click again as many times as you need to add more segments.
Let us now duplicate all the Harvey balls together. To do so, select all Harvey balls, and then click on the Duplicate below option.
Now, as you can see, all Harvey balls are filled with black. You can easily change the color. Select the first Harvey ball, and then Shift-click the last Harvey ball. Then carefully click once to bring up the think-cell floating toolbar.
The first color option is for the segment fills, whereas the second color option is for the outline of the circle. You can change both the segment fill and the circle outline colors to any of the options available, such as Theme colors, think-cell colors, grayscale color options, patterns, or any custom color. You can also use the Eyedropper option to sample a color from the slide.
So, as you can see, think-cell is a very capable tool to create Harvey balls. Of course, creating Harvey balls is probably not even the tip of the iceberg as far as think-cell’s capabilities are concerned.
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