How to add a visualization or story to a presentation

You can include Flourish visualizations and stories in any slide deck made with a presentation tool like PowerPoint, Keynote or Google Slides. Depending on what you want to include, how you want to include it, and what tool you're using, you have a few different options.

For static images

To add a static image of a visualization to your presentation, you can always take a screenshot of the graphic. (Here are some tips for doing this on Windows and on a Mac.) Many templates also have an image download feature, which lets you download JPEGs and PNGs – and often SVGs – of your visualization.

For videos or GIFs

If you want to capture the animations of a visualization or story, you can take a screen recording and then add that – either as a video or as a GIF – to your presentation.

For the full, interactive project

It’s even possible to fully embed a Flourish visualization or story by installing a plug-in that enables interactive content, like LiveSlides. Note that you’ll need the plug-in installed on any computer you want to present from.

For the full, interactive project – in PowerPoint

Over the years, we've found that one of the best ways to embed a Flourish visualization or story in a PowerPoint is using an add-in called WebViewer.

You can either install the add-in from inside PowerPoint itself (Insert > Get Add-in's > Search "Web Viewer" in the Microsoft Add-in store)...

... or by navigating to the Add-in store from your web browser, searching for "Web Viewer" and clicking "Get it now".

After you've installed Web Viewer, you can add it to a slide by going to Insert > My Add-ins, and double-clicking on "Web Viewer".

You'll then need to paste in the URL of a published Flourish visualization or story. However, for the add-in to properly recognize the URL, you will need to add "/embed" onto the end and remove the "https://" suffix at the beginning. So, for example, a properly edited URL would look like this: "public.flourish.studio/visualisation/90909090/embed".

Once your visualization or story is in a slide, you can resize the Web Viewer frame, add other text or images, and even include multiple Flourish projects in a single slide.

When you run PowerPoint in Slide Show mode, the Flourish visualization or story should automatically load and be fully interactive or animated.

Some limitations with this method:

  • Flourish visualizations and stories are published to the web, so your computer – and the computer of anyone viewing your PowerPoint deck will need an internet connection in order to view the visualisations
  • Anyone you share your presentation with will need to "trust" the add-in, which then automatically installs it onto their local version of PowerPoint. In some enterprise environments, this might be blocked by corporate security policies.
  • Under the hood, Web Viewer relies upon Internet Explorer, which means that Flourish visualisations built using WebGL – for example, our Point Map, Marker Map and 3D Region Map – don’t work
  • If you've published a Flourish visualization or story behind a password, Web Viewer will still work, but anyone who views the presentation themselves will need to enter the password

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