Charting Your Course

One of the features that has made Excel so popular is its charting ability. You can easily create a wide variety of charts based on data in the worksheet. When the data changes, the chart updates automatically. Excel charts are very sophisticated, but, by using the Chart Wizard, you can create many great-looking charts with a few mouse clicks.

The first consideration is the data, which must be contained in a contiguous area of the chart (which is how you have your data most of the time, anyway). Figure 2.6 shows an example of worksheet data that is arranged in a way the Chart Wizard can use. Note two things about this data:

• Data is arranged in adjacent columns.

• Each row and column has an identifying label.

Now let’s walk through the steps of using the Chart Wizard to create a chart from this data.

First, select all the data by dragging the mouse over cells B3 to H9. Then click the Chart Wizard button on the toolbar, or select Insert, Chart from the menu.

In this step you select the chart type on the left side of the wizard dialog box and the subtype on the right side. For this example you should accept the default clustered column chart, but you can experiment with other types and subtypes by selecting them and clicking the Press and Hold to View Sample button. When done, click the Next button to go to step two of the wizard.

In this step you can see a sample of what the chart looks like. You can also verify the data range and select whether you want the data plotted by rows or columns. Accept the defaults for now and click the Next button to go on to step three.

Taken From : Manage Your Money and Investments with Microsoft Excel

Related posts:

1. Charting Your Course (2) You can see the dialog box for step three has...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.