Building Line Charts

Quick reference

• 00:04 In this video, we're going to look at building a dual series line chart, and
• 00:08 we've got the perfect set of data to work with to do just that.
• 00:11 We've got two series here, actual and budget revenue, and
• 00:15 we have twelve different points in time with values for those revenue months.
• 00:21 This is perfect, because that's what line charts are great at,
• 00:23 is showing how certain points of time can compare to each other.
• 00:27 So let's take a look at what we need to do to build an effective dual series
• 00:31 line chart.
• 00:32 And our first step, of course, is to actually insert a chart.
• 00:34 So let's do that now.
• 00:36 We'll grab our data.
• 00:38 We'll go to the Insert tab.
• 00:40 Let's go take a look at Recommended Charts.
• 00:42 Hey, you know what? That first one actually looks pretty good.
• 00:44 Why don't we start with that.
• 00:45 We'll say OK, and it gives us a chart that's not in too bad a shape but
• 00:51 definitely could still use some work.
• 00:53 The first thing that I don't like about it is that it says Chart Title at the top,
• 00:56 and that usually doesn't give me a lot.
• 00:58 So I select it.
• 00:58 I'm gonna press equals, and
• 01:00 I'm gonna choose cell C3 because this is gonna give me the context for
• 01:05 what I want or know is being charted, the actual revenue versus budget.
• 01:09 Now, looking at some of the other pieces here, I can see that I've got a lot of
• 01:14 extra zeros going on in my in my axis titles on the side here.
• 01:18 So, I'm gonna change those and because everything's linked back to the chart,
• 01:22 we'll just go and drop the decimals down on these.
• 01:25 There we go. That looks a little bit better.
• 01:27 My dates are very angular, and I'm not really a big fan on that.
• 01:31 We could expand the chart by quite a ways in order to make them level, but that
• 01:36 really seems to make quite a big chart and it really shouldn't be all that necessary.
• 01:40 So, I don't know that I really want to try and do that, but
• 01:43 I definitely don't want them angular.
• 01:44 I also don't that much of a date in here either.
• 01:47 So, I'm gonna choose a different format for it.
• 01:50 So select the original data, we'll right-click and say Format Cells.
• 01:54 And in the Format Cells dialog box, I'm gonna go and take a look on the Number tab
• 01:59 in Date here, and scroll through and see what other formats I have.
• 02:03 Mar-12, when I click on it, tells me that, based on the data cell that I have here,
• 02:08 It's gonna end up returning January 13 for January 2013.
• 02:12 That looks okay, so we'll say OK.
• 02:15 And let's just expand that chart a little bit more.
• 02:18 And we can see that that looks much better.
• 02:20 Now, okay.
• 02:22 Now, some other things.
• 02:23 This is actually pretty good right now, but
• 02:25 there's a couple things that I do wanna change and just add a little bit more.
• 02:29 One of the things I'd like to do is, I'd like to take, we've got
• 02:32 a little bit of white space on the ends here that I really don't think I need.
• 02:36 So, I'd like to move the data up against the margin for January.
• 02:39 And the way I do that is I right-click on the axis, format axis.
• 02:45 And in the task pane here, we're gonna scroll down to the bottom.
• 02:48 And you'll notice that that we have the option to set the axis position to
• 02:52 on tick marks.
• 02:53 And watch what happens.
• 02:54 The chart expands.
• 02:55 It feels a little bit more complete,
• 02:56 without a little bit of white space around the outside.
• 02:58 I kinda like that a little bit better.
• 03:00 The other thing that I would actually like to do here is I'd like to have a little
• 03:04 bit more context showing me where the individual months show up on this line.
• 03:10 So to do that, I'm gonna select the line.
• 03:13 And you'll notice that I now have series options.
• 03:18 But I'm gonna change this.
• 03:19 I'm gonna go click on bucket.
• 03:21 And I'm gonna just make sure that I'm scrolled all the way to the top.
• 03:24 I'm gonna click marker.
• 03:27 And marker options.
• 03:29 And notice that I have the ability to actually choose a built in marker and
• 03:33 even change the shape to something like a bullet.
• 03:35 And this is gonna give me something that I can now actually really quickly see
• 03:39 exactly which of these data points is where.
• 03:41 But there's one more challenge I'm really not happy with.
• 03:44 Notice this orange line is actually overwriting the blue line.
• 03:47 And the orange line is budget.
• 03:49 To me, the actual revenue is much more important,
• 03:51 because that's what I've got to take home and put in the bank.
• 03:53 So, I really wanna make sure that the blue line is up front.
• 03:57 How do I go about doing that?
• 03:59 Well, what we're gonna do is we're gonna select the chart.
• 04:02 We're gonna go to Design.
• 04:04 And Select Data.
• 04:06 And you can see that by doing this we've got the marching ants around the data that
• 04:09 we selected, those series show up in here.
• 04:12 But we can also see that revenue actual and budget are showing here.
• 04:16 Now, the interesting part about this is that this is the order they're drawn on
• 04:19 the chart and
• 04:20 the most latest pen to be used is the one that actually ends up showing up on top.
• 04:25 So that's why budget, being drawn second, is showing up on top of the blue line.
• 04:28 So all we need to do to fix it is make sure that we selected actual and
• 04:32 just move it down.
• 04:33 And then when we say OK, we can see that now, especially here in June, the blue
• 04:38 line is right on top of the orange one, so I can see exactly what I'm looking for.
• 04:43 Close off the task pane and now I've got a pretty darn good
• 04:47 looking chart that gives me some really easy to access information.
• 04:50 Pretty happy with that.

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