Excel Chart

Creating Charts In Excel 2007

Charts in Excel 2007 give you a way to represent visually series of numerical data. Large volumes of data are often easier to understand when presented in a graphical form.

Before we can create an Excel chart, we'll need some data. Let's use the simple example data in the image below.

To create a chart based on this data, select the cells containing the data and then click Insert > Charts > Column, and select the second thumbnail (Stacked Chart). The chart below appears in your worksheet.

The stacked chart is ideal to provide a comparison of two data sets, and in our example we can easily see how big a proportion "late deliveries" are of the number of "total deliveries". Different types of data require different types of chart, and the following are available to us:

• Column
• Line
• Pie
• Bar
• Area
• Scatter
• Other

Each of the chart type buttons in the ribbon displays a down arrow - this means that you will be presented with a gallery of thumbnails for each chart that you can choose. There are many available.

You'll notice that when the chart is selected, the Chart Tools contextual tab is displayed in the ribbon. This tab contains all the chart specific commands and functions that you might need to get your chart looking just the way you want it. For example, you can change the colours of the bars (if you're using a bar chart) on the Design tab, change titles for axes and change the legend on the Layout tab and also apply styles to the chart on the Format tab. The best thing to do is trial and error each change you make. If you don't like what you've changed, you can always ctrl-z to undo it.

Changing The Chart Type

If you've created an Excel chart, amended the data and changed the styling of the chart, but then decide that a different chart type would be more suitable, undoing all those changes to then re-insert a different chart would be a pain. Fortunately, we don't have to undo everything. We can, instead, simply change the chart type by selecting the chart and then right clicking on it > Change Chart Type. The Change Chart Type window displays chart categories on the left and thumbnail images of the charts within those categories in the main panel. Alas, there is no live preview available here, so it's another case of applying a new chart type and undoing any changes you make that you don't like. Life's a bitch.