Excel 2010 Bible

437

CHAPTER

Learning Advanced

Charting

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 very easy. Select your data, choose
a chart type, and you’re finished. You may take a few extra seconds
and select one of the prebuilt Chart Layouts, and maybe even select
one of the Chart Styles. But if your goal is to create the most effective chart
possible, you probably want to take advantage of the additional customiza-
tion 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 sub-
stantial (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 as
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 the 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.