Excel 2019 Bible

489

C H A P T E R

21

Using Advanced Charting

Techniques

IN THIS CHAPTER

Understanding chart customization

Changing basic chart elements

Working with data series

Discovering some chart-making tricks

E

xcel makes creating a basic chart easy. Select your data, choose a chart type, and you’re fin-

ished. You may take a few extra seconds and select one of the prebuilt chart styles and maybe

even select one of the chart layouts. But if your goal is to create the most effective chart pos-

sible, you probably want to take advantage of the additional customization techniques available in

Excel.

Customizing a chart involves changing its appearance, as well as possibly adding new elements to

it. These changes can be purely cosmetic (such as changing colors, modifying line widths, or adding

a shadow) or quite substantial (say, changing the axis scales or adding a second value axis). Chart

elements that you might add include such features as a data table, a trend line, or error bars.

The preceding chapter introduced charting in Excel and described how to create basic charts. This

chapter takes the topic to the next level. You learn how to customize your charts to the maximum

so that they look exactly like you want. You also pick up some slick charting tricks that will make

your charts even more impressive.

Selecting Chart Elements

Modifying a chart is similar to everything else you do in Excel: first you make a selection (in this

case, select a chart element), and then you issue a command to do something with your selection.

You can select only one chart element (or one group of chart elements) at a time. For example,

if you want to change the font for two axis labels, you must work on each set of axis labels

separately.

Excel® 2019 Bible, First Edition. Michael Alexander, Dick Kusleika and John Walkenbach.
© 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2019 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.