What Lies Behind: Schroeder Redux... But Where's Lucy?

After a couple weeks of thought, I'm considering that there may be another way to get a charted family-tree onto one of these blog-pages without its being merely a static image/snapshot. The charts I've drawn up of my family's (paternal) line have been via Excel.

But WordPress will not import Excel – which is understandable, since (as I understand it) an Excel spreadsheet can hide macros and other interesting no-no features that could really wreak havoc on one's computer, and/or perhaps also WordPress's servers.

WordPress will import PowerPoint (PPT only, not PPS). And PowerPoint + Org Chart can do the trick of showing the connected boxes I use… but I still have to limit the chart's width and length to fit within a PowerPoint slide. Whereas with Excel, you have to go quite a few columns out and rows down before you run out of space. 

However – heh-heh – it's possible to embed Excel in a PowerPoint slide, and then import that into one's WordPress blog… I think. Let's try it with the second illustration from February 13, von Schroeder's direct paternal line from his earliest recorded ancestor. First, as a simple link:

0228 Schroeder 2

No, that doesn't do what I have in mind. Typically, a PPT slide with an embedded Excel spreadsheet will allow you to double-click on the spreadsheet and open it up within (sub-)Excel. Here, though, via the link, it's become a single-slide slideshow; clicking on the slide/chart automatically advances to the next slide (none!), as though this were a PPS.  Let's see if I can embed that slide…

[a couple minutes later:] Upload, sure. Embed? Doesn't look like it. I tried a couple times, but the result was consistently a hyperlink to the slide, not an embedded image a les JPG images I did on 2/13.However… once at that image, via the above link, right-click and select "edit slide"… 

  …and then double-click on the slide. Voilà; here's Excel, and… ahh, here are the rollover notes on the ancestors, too.  (Hey, how does that work for you monobutton-mouse Mac-ers?)

But I don't like that two-removes kind of functionality; I want the image to be able to give at least some kind of interactivity, either by rollover (as in Excel, and other MS apps that allow insertion of comments), or by animation, preferably via PPS... which WordPress will allow. If I could figure out how to build a GIF out of a series of images, that would work nicely, too, since WordPress is GIF-friendly, e.g.:

One further way would be to take a screenshot with the spreadsheet set to show all comments… but that would be rather crowded, and might make lines of descent and interrelationships a lot less evident.

Haven't given up yet; stay tuned...