Part III: Creating Charts and Other Visualizations
Parts of a chart
A chart is made up of many different elements, and all of these elements are optional. Yes,
you can create a chart that contains no chart elements—an empty chart. It’s not very use-
ful, but Excel allows it.
Refer to the chart in Figure 20.5 as you read the following description of the chart’s
elements.
FIGURE 20.5
Parts of a chart
Vertical/value axis
Data
series
Legend Vertical/value axis
Horizontal/category axis
Gridlines Plot area Chart title Chart area
This particular chart is a combination chart that displays both columns and a line. The
chart has two data series: Income and Profit Margin. Income is plotted as vertical columns,
and Profit Margin is plotted as a line with square markers. Each bar (or marker on the line)
represents a single data point (the value in a cell).
