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About this lesson
Learn how to create an effective column chart by reducing ink and 'noise' that distract from the main messages.
Lesson versions
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Exercise files
Download the ‘before’ and ‘after’ Excel workbooks from the video tutorial and try the lesson yourself.
Building Column Charts17.8 KB Building Column Charts - Completed
22.7 KB
Quick reference
Topic
Building column charts in Excel 2016.
Description
How to create an effective column chart by reducing ink and noise that distract from the story.
Where/when to use the technique
Use to remove distracting elements from your data whenever you are charting. Doing this will help you convey your message to your readers as quickly as possible.
Instructions
Charting Goals
- Every chart should tell a story, quickly and effectively
- Extra chart elements create noise, and get in the way of the story
- It is a best practice to remove as much excess ink (noise) as you can
Creating a Column chart
- Select cells A5:B9
- Go to Insert --> Charts --> Recommended Charts and select the Clustered Column chart
Adding context
- Right click the data series (columns) and choose Add Data Labels
- Select the data labels, right click and choose Format Data Labels
- Set the Label Position to Inside Base
- Change the font (Home tab) to bold and white
- Select the chart title, press the equals key, click on A3 and press Enter
- Right click the columns, choose Format Data Series and set the Gap Width to 60%
Reducing Ink
- Select the horizontal gridlines and press Delete
- Select the vertical axis and press Delete
- 00:04 We're now gonna focus on charting in Excel.
- 00:07 One of the things that we always want to keep in mind as we're developing charts
- 00:11 is that every chart should tell a story as quickly and effectively as possible.
- 00:16 Every extra chart element that's on the chart creates noise and
- 00:20 gets in the way of the story.
- 00:21 And it is therefore a best practice to remove as much excess ink or noise as we can so
- 00:26 the reader can actually look at the chart, get in,
- 00:29 get the information that they need, and get out as quickly as possible.
- 00:33 We're gonna start by charting Old MacDonald's sales here.
- 00:36 We're gonna use a column chart and
- 00:37 then customize it to make it look as good as we possibly can.
- 00:41 To start with, we'll select our data, and then we'll go to the insert tab.
- 00:46 And we're gonna go click on Recommended Charts.
- 00:49 You'll notice that right away, the recommended chart is a clustered column
- 00:53 chart for this data, so that's nice and easy.
- 00:56 Let's go select that and say OK.
- 00:58 And it'll build us a chart that's not too bad.
- 01:01 But we can make some differences to this, make this look a little bit better here.
- 01:06 The first thing I'm gonna do is,
- 01:07 I'm gonna right-click on one of the data series here.
- 01:10 And I'm gonna say Add Data Labels, and we'll add data labels to it, there we go.
- 01:16 With the data labels in place, I really don't need the lines across here or
- 01:21 the vertical axis that shows these numbers.
- 01:24 So I can select these and say Delete.
- 01:27 And I can select the lines here and also say Delete.
- 01:30 So that removes some of the noise and
- 01:32 actually makes this look a little bit cleaner.
- 01:35 Now, in addition to this I can go through and I can do some other things.
- 01:38 I could right-click on these series here and say Format Data Series.
- 01:44 And I could change the series overlap and gap widths to different values.
- 01:49 So maybe I'll set this gap width, I'll slide it down here and
- 01:52 get to somewhere round say 60% to make those numbers look a little bit bigger.
- 01:57 I may also want to change the position of these numbers.
- 02:00 And you'll notice when I select them,
- 02:02 that it comes up with a format data labels right off the bat.
- 02:07 I could click on this little charting thing on the side here.
- 02:11 And I could change my label position to Inside Base.
- 02:15 Now that's not bad, but they're kinda dark, it's hard to see here.
- 02:19 So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna go to the Home tab and
- 02:22 I'm gonna change my font to white and
- 02:26 set it to bold as well to make sure that these pop out a little bit more.
- 02:32 The final thing that I'm going to do with this particular chart is I'm
- 02:35 going to change the header on it.
- 02:37 I'm going to select where it says May, I'm going to type in =.
- 02:42 And notice that the header doesn't change, it doesn't say = here, but
- 02:45 it is showing in the formula bar.
- 02:47 If that's not the case you want to select outside the chart and try again.
- 02:51 But what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna click Number of Animals Sold.
- 02:54 I'm gonna say Enter and I now have a good title on my chart.
- 02:59 I can dismiss the task pane.
- 03:01 I can click in the worksheet cells and I now have a nice clean chart
- 03:05 that allows my users to very quickly get the idea that beef sales are the highest.
- 03:10 But still gives them the numbers to look at in order to try and
- 03:13 figure out exactly what they want.
- 03:15 So I've reduced as much ink as possible.
- 03:17 I've removed as many elements from the chart as I possibly could to let the user
- 03:22 just focus on getting the exact message they need as quickly as possible, so
- 03:26 they can jump out to do other work.
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