Part III: Creating Charts and Other Visualizations
- Click the Insert tab and then click a Chart icon in the Charts group. The icon
expands into a gallery list that shows chart subtypes for the selected chart type
(see Figure 20.9).
FIGURE 20.9
The icons in the Insert ➪ Charts group expand to show a gallery of chart subtypes.
- Click a Chart subtype, and Excel then creates the chart of the specified type.
Figure 20.10 shows a column chart created from the data.
To create a default chart quickly, select the data and press Alt+F1 to create an embedded chart, or press F11 to
create a chart on a chart sheet.
Switching the row and column orientation
When Excel creates a chart, it uses an algorithm to determine whether the data is arranged
in columns or in rows. Most of the time Excel guesses correctly, but if it creates the chart
using the wrong orientation, you can quickly change it by selecting the chart and choosing
Chart Tools Design ➪ Data ➪ Switch Row/Column. This command is a toggle, so if changing
the data orientation doesn’t improve the chart, just choose the command again (or click the
Undo button found on the Quick Access toolbar).
