Part III: Creating Charts and Graphics
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- Activate the chart and choose Chart Tools ➪ Design ➪ Type ➪ Save as Template.
Excel displays its Save Chart Template dialog box. - Provide a name for the template and click Save.
To create a chart based on a template- Select the data to be used in the chart.
- Choose Insert ➪ Charts ➪ Other Charts ➪ All Chart Types. Excel displays its Insert
Chart dialog box. - From the left side of the Insert Chart dialog box, select Templates. Excel displays an
icon for each custom template that has been created. - Click the icon that represents the template you want to use and then click OK. Excel
creates the chart based on the template you selected.
Note
You can also apply a template to an existing chart. Select the chart and choose Chart Tools ➪ Design ➪
Change Chart Type. n
Learning Some Chart-Making Tricks
This section describes some interesting (and perhaps useful) chart-making tricks. Some of these
tricks use little-known features, and several tricks enable you to make charts that you may have
considered impossible to create.Creating picture charts
Excel makes it easy to incorporate a pattern, texture, or graphics file for elements in your chart.
Figure 19.33 shows a chart that uses a photo as the background for a chart’s Chart Area element.To display an image in a chart element, use the Fill tab in the element’s Format dialog box. Select
the Picture or Texture Fill option and then click the button that corresponds to the image source
(File, Clipboard, or ClipArt). If you use the Clipboard button, make sure that you copied your
image first. The other two options prompt you for the image.Figure 19.34 shows two more examples: a pie chart that uses Office clipart as its fill; and a column
chart that uses a Shape, which was inserted on a worksheet and then copied to the Clipboard.On the CD
The examples in this section are available on the companion CD-ROM. The filename is picture charts.
xlsx.