Part III: Creating Charts and Other Visualizations
You can make changes to a data series by using the options on the Ribbon or from the
Format Data Series task pane. This task pane varies depending on the type of data series on
which you’re working (column, line, pie, and so on).
If the Format task pane isn’t already displayed, the easiest way to display the Format Data Series task pane is to
double-click the chart series. Be careful, however: if a data series is already selected, double-clicking brings up
the Format Data Point task pane. Changes that you make affect only one point in the data series. To edit the entire
series, make sure that a chart element other than the data series is selected before you double-click the data series.
Or, just press Ctrl+1 to display the task pane.
Deleting or hiding a data series
To delete a data series in a chart, select the data series and press Delete. The data series
disappears from the chart. The data in the worksheet, of course, remains intact.
You can delete all data series from a chart. If you do so, the chart appears empty. It retains its settings, however.
Therefore, you can add a data series to an empty chart, and it again looks like a chart.
To hide a data series temporarily, activate a chart and click the Chart Filters button on the
right. Remove the check mark from the data series that you want to hide, click Apply, and
that data series is hidden—but it’s still associated with the chart, so you can unhide it
later. You can’t hide all the series, though. At least one must be visible. The Chart Filters
button also lets you hide individual points in a series. Note that the new chart types intro-
duced in Excel 2016 and Excel 2019 do not display a Chart Filters button.
Adding a new data series to a chart
If you want to add another data series to an existing chart, one approach is to re-create the
chart and include the new data series. However, adding the data to the existing chart is
usually easier, and your chart retains any customization that you’ve made.
Excel provides three ways to add a new data series to a chart:
■ Use the Select Data Source dialog box: Activate the chart and choose Chart Tools
➪ Design ➪ Data ➪ Select Data. In the Select Data Source dialog box, click the Add
button and Excel displays the Edit Series dialog box. Specify the series name (as
a cell reference or text) and the range that contains the series values. The Select
Data Source dialog box is also accessible from the shortcut menu displayed by right-
clicking many elements in a chart.
■ Drag the range outline: If the data series to be added is contiguous with other
data in the chart, you can click the Chart Area in the chart. Excel highlights and
