Locked lesson.
About this lesson
Make data more visually appealing by choosing from a variety of chart types.
Quick reference
Creating Charts
Turn numerical data into visual representations with charts or graphs
When to use
Use to create column charts. Learn how to use the ‘Recommended Charts’ option. Create a dynamic chart title.
Instructions
Create a chart
Method 1
- Select source data for chart
- Go to the ‘Insert’ tab and select one of the commonly-used charts from the available icons in the Charts command group
Method 2
- Select source data for chart
- Go to the ‘Insert’ tab and click on the ‘Recommended Charts’ option in the Charts command group
- Select a suitable chart
Create a dynamic chart title
- Click on the chart title box, type an equal (=) sign into the Formula Bar
- Click on a cell that contains the text you want displayed as your chart title
- 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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