Inserting and Manipulating Charts

Quick reference

• 00:04 Believe it or not, charts can be incredibly fun.
• 00:07 Okay.
• 00:08 I may be taking my enthusiasm a little too far, but they can be really powerful.
• 00:13 You've heard the phrase a picture is worth a thousand words, right?
• 00:16 Not only does this apply to charts, but it's especially true of charts.
• 00:20 In this lesson we will explore how to create a chart,
• 00:23 as well as how to modify the contents and the look and the feel.
• 00:27 We'll look at two dimensional, three dimensional, and interactive chart types.
• 00:31 So hold on to your hats and let's get started.
• 00:34 Adding a chart to your slide is simple.
• 00:37 We start the process by clicking on the chart button on the toolbar.
• 00:41 This will give us various design options, and chart types to choose from.
• 00:45 As with shapes and other objects,
• 00:46 we can scroll from page to page to find just what we're looking for.
• 00:50 You'll also notice that we can choose from two dimensional styles,
• 00:53 three dimensional styles, or interactive styles.
• 00:56 Let's start by choosing a 2D chart to work with.
• 00:59 Once we have found the design and
• 01:01 style we want to use, we click on that chart to add it to our slide.
• 01:04 Now that we have a chart to work with, let's do something with it.
• 01:09 The first thing we want to do is add valid data points.
• 01:12 So the chart is meaningful to us and our audience.
• 01:15 To do this, all we need to do is click on the edit chart
• 01:18 data button at the bottom of the chart.
• 01:21 This will open a grid of data that we can add to, take away or modify,
• 01:25 depending on our needs.
• 01:27 Once our data has been entered,
• 01:28 we can close this window to commit the changes to the chart.
• 01:32 Before we start talking about design elements, let's remove this chart and
• 01:36 add a new chart, but this time, we will choose a 3D chart.
• 01:41 Apart from the obvious 3D look,
• 01:43 there really is only one thing that differentiates a 3D chart from a 2D chart,
• 01:48 and it's the circle found in the middle of the chart itself.
• 01:51 This circle allows us to rotate the chart to the exact
• 01:54 perspective that we want to display the chart for our audience.
• 01:57 If we want to emphasize the beginning of a trend for
• 02:00 example, we may want to bring the left side of the chart to the foreground.
• 02:04 Conversely, if we want to emphasize the end of a trend we would do the opposite.
• 02:09 As you can see, the motion of rotating the chart is as fluid as you would expect.
• 02:13 Also, notice the shadows and reflective properties of the chart as we rotate it.
• 02:17 Apple really pays a lot of attention to the details of their products and
• 02:21 this is no exception.
• 02:23 Now that we have created our chart, added our data, and
• 02:26 rotated our 3D chart to the appropriate perspective,
• 02:29 let's talk about visual changes that we can make to our chart.
• 02:33 When the chart is selected, you will notice that the formatting pane has
• 02:36 adjusted its properties to reflect chart-specific attributes.
• 02:40 From here, we can adjust the chart style or colors.
• 02:45 This would be a great time to look at all of the options that are available to see
• 02:48 what best fits your needs.
• 02:50 If you don't find something you like, don't stress about it.
• 02:53 I'll show you a way to customize those colors in just a minute.
• 02:57 We can also choose whether we show the chart title in legend, and
• 03:00 change the font styles.
• 03:03 In the section below we start to get into some really interesting attributes.
• 03:07 In this section we can control the 3D scene, the chart depth, lighting style,
• 03:12 and bar shape.
• 03:14 Let's take a few seconds to explore some of these options.
• 03:18 In the Gaps section we can adjust the amount of space between bars,
• 03:21 as well as between sets.
• 03:23 As you can see, we can be very granular in these values,
• 03:26 allowing us to be very precise in our design.
• 03:29 In the next section, we can adjust our shadow values.
• 03:33 If you started with a two dimensional chart and wanted to change it to a three
• 03:36 dimensional chart, this section will allow you to do that.
• 03:40 We can also change it to a third chart type, which is interactive.
• 03:44 While we're here, let's explore that chart type.
• 03:48 Interactive charts are amazing for telling a story using motion.
• 03:52 Rather than showing the static with a trend line, we can use that same data to
• 03:56 build an animated chart that grows, or shrinks over time, like in this example.
• 04:02 This type of motion can be extremely powerful to your audience
• 04:05 When you use an interactive chart, it has an animation build built right into it.
• 04:10 When it comes time to present to your audience, we simply hit the advance key
• 04:14 one time, and it will automatically build the chart for
• 04:17 us using the data that we have supplied it.
• 04:20 Let's move away from chart types and
• 04:21 continue our discussion our discussion on modifying chart properties.
• 04:24 If we click on the axis tab in the formating pane, we will expose options for
• 04:29 changing attributes related to the axis of the chart.
• 04:32 Using this check box, we can choose to display or hide the axis name.
• 04:37 In the axis scale section, we can adjust our minimum and maximum values,
• 04:41 as well as the number of steps it takes to get from min to max.
• 04:45 For example, if we changed our minimum value to zero and
• 04:48 our maximum value to 150 and we changed the number of steps to three
• 04:53 we would see the values 50, 100, and 150 along our y axis.
• 04:58 If we wanted more detail we would simply increase the number of steps that it takes
• 05:02 to go from min to max.
• 05:04 As you can see this also adjusts the number of grid lines which we see on our
• 05:07 chart which can make it easier to read the values on the chart.
• 05:11 We can use the value label section to add our label to our axis values.
• 05:15 For example, if we were showing data in US dollars
• 05:19 we could use the currency option that will insert a dollar sign.
• 05:23 Depending on the type of value that we choose from,
• 05:25 we may have other parameters to adjust as well.
• 05:28 If we need to add a prefix or a suffix to our axis values, we can set that here.
• 05:33 For example, if we were showing a chart for
• 05:35 dollar amounts in the millions, we may opt to keep our numerical values simple, but
• 05:40 add the letter M as a suffix character to denote that the values are in millions.
• 05:45 There are a few other options you may want to explore below.
• 05:48 In this section we've been exploring how to modify the Y axis.
• 05:52 Similar attributes are available for
• 05:53 modifying the X axis by choosing this tab here.
• 05:57 There are a few other options that are available under the series, and
• 06:00 arrange tabs, but we won't go through those in this lesson.
• 06:03 In this lesson, we've walked through how to create a chart,
• 06:06 how to switch between chart types, how to change chart colors, gap settings,
• 06:11 scene attributes, axis scales, and axis values.
• 06:15 Hopefully at this point, you're anxious to start creating your own charts.
• 06:18 So we'll stop the lesson now, and let you get busy exploring.

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