Building Column Charts

Quick reference

• 00:03 In this video we're gonna start looking at data visualizations in the shape of
• 00:08 charts.
• 00:09 And the one thing I wanted to really impress on you here,
• 00:12 is that virtually every chart that you build inside excel
• 00:15 needs to be customized to make it truly effective.
• 00:18 The reason were it being is, because we want to remove distracting elements from
• 00:22 our charts when we're doing them or when we're building them.
• 00:25 And this helps really convey a message to your readers as quickly
• 00:28 as possible without distracting with irrelevant stuff.
• 00:30 So we're gonna stick away from 3D and moving and glowing objects and
• 00:34 all that kind of stuff.
• 00:35 We wanna focus in just on our data.
• 00:37 The faster your chart can be consumed, the better it is.
• 00:40 So what we're gonna do first is we're gonna take some data over here.
• 00:44 I'm gonna go and select it.
• 00:45 I'm gonna go to the Insert menu and I'm gonna click on recommended charts.
• 00:50 And Microsoft will come back and give you some recommendations for
• 00:53 some chart types that it thinks are best for what you want to work with.
• 00:56 We're gonna start with this clustered column chart here.
• 01:00 And it does not a bad job of building us a chart, but
• 01:04 we could definitely do some things better here.
• 01:06 The first thing I'd like to do, is like to give the chart a more meaningful title
• 01:09 which I happen to have in the cell over here.
• 01:12 So to do that, I've selected the title of May.
• 01:15 Then I'm gonna type equals.
• 01:17 And what I'm gonna do then is click on the cell, A3 and hit enter.
• 01:23 And you'll notice that that chart title is now linked back to the individual cell.
• 01:26 So that's kind of nice because every time this cell gets updated,
• 01:30 let's say that we update this to 2013.
• 01:32 It now updates the chart title which is great.
• 01:39 You'll notice that we have some other things that we can do with charts as well.
• 01:43 Most charts can be customized.
• 01:44 So what I'm going to do is I'm going to right click on this guy here and
• 01:46 I'm going to say Add Data Labels.
• 01:49 And what that does is it actually puts the numbers for the charts right on them.
• 01:53 This is a little bit better than the approximations with
• 01:56 the lines that we have here.
• 01:57 We've got an axis on the left-hand side, and some lines here.
• 02:00 So as somebody's tracing across, there's no way they would get to 492.
• 02:04 Even though they can recognize this bar as longer than everybody else's and
• 02:07 it's biggest, there's no way they can get the precision out of it that they might
• 02:11 want, by having this little axis over here.
• 02:13 So instead of using that, we'll use these data labels.
• 02:16 That means this axis is no longer relevant.
• 02:18 I'm gonna select it, and I'm gonna press Delete.
• 02:21 And these lines are no longer relevant either, so I'll select them and
• 02:25 press Delete.
• 02:26 So this makes the chart look a little bit cleaner right off the bat,
• 02:29 less distracting elements.
• 02:31 It's got some some nice visuals to pull us directly in and
• 02:33 let us know which is the biggest and which is the smallest.
• 02:36 But it also gives us the ability to get the precision out of it by having
• 02:39 the data label.
• 02:40 But maybe I don't want them at the end, maybe I want them somewhere else.
• 02:43 So let's right click on these data labels here, and say Format Data Labels.
• 02:49 We get some options here, one of which is to put our labels on the inside base.
• 02:54 And when we do that it drops the numbers down to the bottom here.
• 02:59 But they're a little bit hard to see now, so that's not really ideal.
• 03:03 So on the home tab, I'm gonna go and change these into a white font,
• 03:08 cuz they're still selected right now, and maybe I'll make them bold.
• 03:11 If I wanted to I could even change the font size up to something slightly bigger.
• 03:16 So that we can actually see them a little bit better as well.
• 03:20 Maybe I wanna do the same with the legend here.
• 03:22 This legend's not quite popping enough for me.
• 03:25 I could make those bold and set the font size up to something like a 10.5 or,
• 03:30 that didn't really work for me, maybe I'll go up to 11 to try and
• 03:33 get it just a little bit More so.
• 03:35 That's the nice thing with charts.
• 03:37 Every element on a chart can be customized.
• 03:40 We can make all kinds of little modifications to them,
• 03:43 if i were to right click on this guy right here and say format data series.
• 03:46 Maybe I want these bars to be a little bit bigger.
• 03:49 So I'll drop my gap width down a bit and that makes them a little bit fatter.
• 03:54 So that I can see what's happening in those as well.
• 03:57 So, lot of customizations we can do,
• 03:59 but the big key that I really want to sort of draw your attention to here, is you
• 04:02 shouldn't ever really accept one of these charts on the box the way they come in.
• 04:06 Make some customizations.
• 04:07 Take away the stuff that's distracting.
• 04:09 Put stuff in there that's going to help your user Get in, recognize what's
• 04:13 going on and get out so they can go back to their job as quickly as possible.
• 04:16 It will take you hours sometimes to develop a perfect chart
• 04:20 that your usual consume in 30 seconds.
• 04:22 That can be a little bit depressing but
• 04:23 that's the sign when you've really done your job well.
• 04:27 Because your user is looking at it and getting exactly what they need in a split
• 04:31 second, and off to do their job to do something about it.
• 04:33 That's success story with charting.

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