Creating Charts

Quick reference

• 00:04 You can turn your rows and
• 00:06 columns of data into visual representations with charts or graphs.
• 00:11 Though a graph isn't technically a chart, in Excel,
• 00:14 the words graph and chart are used interchangeably.
• 00:18 Charts are an effective way to summarize and visually present statistics.
• 00:23 You can create a chart right inside Excel without having to export it
• 00:27 into some other tool.
• 00:29 There are lots of ways to represent numbers in a way that tell a story.
• 00:33 Bar graphs and pie charts are two of the most commonly used.
• 00:37 Let's create a chart to compare the number of items sold at our stationery store.
• 00:43 First, it's a good idea to ensure that your number formats are correct.
• 00:47 If you have numbers or time formatted as text,
• 00:50 Excel may not know what to do with them when it's creating your chart.
• 00:54 So let's check on our items sold here and look at our number format,
• 00:59 it says general for each one, and
• 01:03 let's check on the price of our items, and the total sales.
• 01:09 These are formatted as accounting so they look good.
• 01:13 The next step is to select the cells you want to use as your source data.
• 01:17 For our chart, we'll want to select the column with the name of each item.
• 01:22 And we also want to select the number of each item sold for this quarter.
• 01:27 Because these two columns aren't adjacent to each other,
• 01:30 we can simply drag all the way across.
• 01:33 So after we select the name of the items and release our mouse,
• 01:36 we press the Ctrl key on our keyboard or Command key if we're using a Mac.
• 01:41 And while still holding that key,
• 01:43 we select the other range with the data that we want.
• 01:46 The Q1 items sold, we release, and with both columns selected,
• 01:51 we go to the Insert tab on the Excel ribbon.
• 01:56 We take a look at the charts command group, and
• 01:58 there are lots of charts available.
• 02:01 If we hover over each one,
• 02:02 we'll get a description of when to use this type of chart.
• 02:09 Better yet, the recommended charts suggest the most suitable chart for
• 02:13 this type of data you selected.
• 02:15 Let's click on that, and we get a dialogue box where we get
• 02:19 to see what our data will look like if we choose that chart.
• 02:26 And there are more charts in the all charts tab of this dialogue box, and
• 02:30 we can click through and select the one that's right for us.
• 02:34 Let's go back to the Recommended Charts and select this column chart.
• 02:37 We hit OK, and the chart is created within the sheet where our source data exists.
• 02:46 One thing we notice is that the chart title takes the title that came
• 02:49 with our items sold, which is okay, but what if we wanted another chart title?
• 02:54 Well, we can customize the name of our chart by clicking on the title box and
• 02:59 typing the chart title into the formula bar.
• 03:03 So let's say we just wanted to call it Items Sold.
• 03:07 We hit that and it becomes our chart title.
• 03:11 Alternatively, we can create a dynamic chart title that's linked
• 03:15 to a cell in our worksheet.
• 03:17 Let's click on the chart title and if we type an equal sign and click on that cell,
• 03:24 then whatever is displayed in that cell will become the title of our chart.
• 03:28 If the cell contains a formula,
• 03:30 then the result of the formula will be your chart title, not the formula itself.
• 03:35 So let's hit OK.
• 03:36 And our chart title is Sal's Stationery Store Sales.
• 03:41 If the value of the cell changes, like if we take off the word sales and
• 03:45 hit Enter, then the chart title is now Sal's Stationery Store.
• 03:50 Another thing we notice is that now that we have a chart within our worksheet,
• 03:54 clicking on that chart gives us two chart tools tabs on our ribbon,
• 03:59 namely, the Design tab and the Format tab.
• 04:04 These are called contextual tabs, meaning they only show up
• 04:07 when a particular object is selected, in this case, a chart.
• 04:12 They're not activated when we select something other than a chart.
• 04:15 So if we click outside of the chart, those tabs go away.
• 04:19 Let's explore how to use the Chart Tools tabs in our next lesson.

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