Need to show the progress of a project, department sales, or statuses of tasks in your slideshow? Using Harvey Balls, you can take advantage of intuitive and recognizable visuals for displaying these types of information.
We’ll walk you through how to add Harvey Balls in PowerPoint, step-by-step. Additionally, we’ll explain how Plus AI can get you off to a quick and easy start for building your presentation.
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What are Harvey Balls?
Harvey Balls are circular shapes that show qualitative details like percentages or other numerical data. They’re often used in reports, may be included in tables, and can represent everything from price comparisons for products to the status of a project.
The shape appears as a pie where the coverage depicts the numeric data. So, the larger the covered segment, the more weight it carries and the smaller the covered segment, the less weight it carries.
Although you commonly see Harvey Balls representing 25, 50, 75, and 100 percent, you can use them for most any percentage, number, or coverage that corresponds to the details of your data.
Ways to use Harvey Balls
Because these handy tools give you effective ways to show visual representations of data, you can use them to save space on your slide, provide your audience intuitive details, and enhance the appearance of your presentation.
Consider using Harvey Balls for these types of information:
- Progress for a group of tasks or the totality of a project.
- Comparisons for prices, features, or attributes for products or services.
- Financials like sales, revenue, and expenses.
- Risk assessments for quality control.
- Ratings or reviews from clients, customers, or vendors.
The key to using Harvey Balls in PowerPoint is that they should be visually independent, uncomplicated, and not overused on a single slide.
How to add Harvey Balls in PowerPoint
If your presentation could benefit from this type of visual, we’ll walk you through how to add Harvey Balls in PowerPoint.
Tip: You can download this free Harvey Balls PowerPoint template that includes the editable slide you see above.
Create and customize the first shape
To get started, you’ll create the first set of shapes and customize them to your liking.
- Select the slide where you want the Harvey Ball and go to the Insert tab.
- Open the Shapes menu and choose Oval.
- Drag to draw the shape as a circle. To make it symmetrical, hold Shift as you drag.
- Optionally adjust the fill and border colors for the circle using the Shape Format tab.
- Reopen the Shapes menu and choose Partial Circle.
- Drag to draw the second shape as a circle to match the size of the first circle.
- Optionally adjust the fill and border colors for the partial circle using the Shape Format tab.
- Drag the partial circle over the top of the full circle and if necessary, drag the edge of the partial circle to fit the full circle.
- To change the angle of the partial circle, select the yellow dot and drag. For example, if you want to show 50 percent, you could drag the yellow dot on the side downward as shown below.
When you finish, group the two circles together to keep them as one unit if you like. This allows you to move or resize the Harvey Ball as a single shape. Select both shapes, go to the Home tab, and pick Group in the Arrange menu.
Create and customize the additional shapes
While you can certainly use the above steps to make the additional Harvey Balls for your slide, there’s a much simpler way. Using PowerPoint’s Copy and Paste actions, you can create duplicates that are the same size, shape, and colors as the original. Then, adjust the shapes as needed.
- Select the grouped shape you created above, right-click, and pick Copy.
- Choose a blank spot on the slide, right-click, and pick Paste.
- Move the second shape where you want it on the slide.
- Follow these same steps to paste the additional Harvey Balls.
- To adjust the angle for the partial circle, simply ungroup the shape and make your change. Select one of the pasted shapes, go to the Home tab, and pick Ungroup in the Arrange menu.
- Drag the yellow dot on the partial circle to adjust the angle, just like you did for the original Harvey Ball.
- Optionally make other changes as you like. For instance, you may want to use a different fill color for each Harvey Ball.
- You can then regroup the shapes by selecting Regroup in the Arrange menu. Note that you do not have to group your full and partial circles. This simply makes it easier to move or resize them.
- Follow the same steps to adjust the partial circles for the other Harvey Balls you pasted on the slide.
Tip: You can add more details to your Harvey Balls if you like. For example, you can insert text boxes to show the percentages on or near each shape as shown below.
Create professional slideshows with Plus AI
Using the Plus AI add-on for PowerPoint, you can get off to a quick start using a collection of templates. The nice thing about these templates is that they provide you with a variety of slide layouts for text, images, lists, charts, and more.
Additionally, the artificial intelligence of Plus AI can create the content for your slideshow with nothing more than a simple prompt. But you can also upload a file, paste in text, or even insert a video link to build your presentation.
For business, academic, personal, or charitable organizations, Plus AI saves you time when you need a presentation in PowerPoint or Google Slides.
Conclusion
Knowing the right visuals to use for a slideshow is just one of the keys to its success. By adding Harvey Balls in PowerPoint, you can display qualitative data in a simple yet intuitive way. Will you give them a try in your next presentation?
And remember, Plus AI is a terrific time-saver for creating any type of slideshow. With artificial intelligence for the entire show, it’s sure to become your go-to presentation maker.
FAQs
What can I use instead of Harvey Balls?
For other ways to display numeric representations, consider charts like pie charts, bar charts, or heatmaps. You can also use an icon set, like those available in Microsoft Excel, or even emojis for an upbeat way to show your data.
How do you type Harvey Balls?
With the Symbols feature in PowerPoint, you can insert text-based Harvey Balls as an alternative to the Shapes feature. Add a text box, go to the Insert tab, and select Symbol.
On Windows, choose Geometric Shapes in the Subset drop-down menu and on Mac, search for “circle” or add Geometric Shapes to the Character Viewer list. You’ll then see the basic Harvey Balls you can insert.
Did Harvey Ball invent Harvey Balls?
These visuals were invented by Harvey L. Poppel who worked with Booz Allen Hamilton’s consulting firm. This is the reason Harvey Balls are sometimes referred to as Booz Balls. Harvey Ball, on the other hand, is recognized as the inventor of the smiley face.
