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About this lesson
Understand and work with the tricky parts of charts such as axes and legends.
Lesson versions
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Exercise files
Download the ‘before’ and ‘after’ PowerPoint presentations from the video tutorial and try the lesson yourself.
Advanced Chart Options.pptx144.1 KB Advanced Chart Options - Complete.pptx
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Quick reference
Topic
Working with advanced chart features.
When to use
To customize and populate a chart that is already inserted on a slide.
Instructions
- Chart elements can be added to a chart from:
- The Layout tab on the ribbon when a chart on the slide is selected.
- Right-click any Chart element or double/triple clicking it will bring up the dialog box to customize that particular option.
Good practice when working with charts
- A chart should have a relevant title.
- Each axis title should explain the category of data presented and the numerical range of the data.
- The legend should identify and explain the series data.
- A large (excessive) number of major gridlines is not necessary.
- If you have to charts on a slide with similar data types, the scales of the Y axes should be the same to allow meaningful comparisons.
Also note:
The dialog box used for working with charts is ‘modeless’, which means it can remain open and the context of the box will change depending on which chart element is selected.
The dialog box can be dragged to another monitor (if connected to your computer) and remain open while you work on charts.
Login to download- 00:03 In this video we’re going to start adding some chart elements, editing particular elements, and looking for potential problems, so we’re going to
- 00:10 start with a chart on our slide in PowerPoint and there’s another video that covers inserting charts onto slides. I select this particular chart, and
- 00:17 notice immediately it has a chart title already. And I’m also given three tabs on the ribbon. Now the design and the format tabs were covered in
- 00:24 other videos, and there’s also the layout tab here and we’ll cover that in this video. Notice also the selection group, which gives you a
- 00:32 name for what you’ve got currently selected and an opportunity to format it from the ribbon or to reset it to match whatever style you originally
- 00:39 chose for it. Anyway, the best way to learn is to start bouncing around so let’s start. The first thing I notice about the chart is the x and y axes
- 00:46 aren’t visible and they don’t have any scales or category names to tell me what the chart’s about. So we go to the axes group on the
- 00:53 ribbon, axes drop down button, and the primary horizontal axis is turned off so I turn that on by clicking show left to right and the same for the
- 01:02 primary vertical axis, show default axis and not concern myself with selecting any one with a particular scale. And as I turn them on the
- 01:10 scales for the vertical axis and the category names for the horizontal axis becomes available. I also add axis titles and we will
- 01:19 rename them shortly so the axis titles drop down button, primary horizontal axis title, title below the axis, and the primary vertical axis
- 01:27 title, rotated title, and that just spins the text box the title is in by 90 degrees. And that pushes the chart over but it doesn’t take up too
- 01:37 much room. Editing these elements on the chart is as simple as clicking within the element, such as the chart title, or I can drag my mouse
- 01:44 over it and type in city weather, and I click within the vertical axis title and type in temp. with a full stop because it is an abbreviated word and for
- 01:54 the horizontal axis I type in city. To add a legend to the chart, it’s as simple as clicking the legend drop down arrow and picking a
- 02:01 placement location. The options are right, top, left, bottom, and an overlay which effectively places the legend on top of the chart. Now I
- 02:11 don’t personally prefer that although you can drag the legend to a new location on the chart where it doesn’t interfere with some elements.
- 02:18 So CTRL Z to undo that. I don’t need data labels, but let’s turn them on to see the result and then CTRL Z to undo that last command
- 02:26 and go back to our sequence of actions earlier. We could add a data table, either on its own or let’s turn on the table with legend keys and it’s a
- 02:37 very effective way to have both the chart and the table combined. We’ve already looked at the axes drop down button, so the gridlines drop
- 02:44 down button allows us to control what a title major and minor gridlines. When I select the gridlines on the chart, you can see that they are
- 02:51 spaced at intervals of 5 and that the boundary scale is from 0 to a maximum of 30. So the major gridlines are currently turned on. We’ve
- 03:00 also got an option to add minor gridlines as an alternative. You can see that the minor gridlines have filled in between the major gridlines and
- 03:07 that would allow someone to accurately determine the value of data in a column with more precision. Personally I think it looks a bit
- 03:14 too cluttered and I either stick to major horizontal gridlines or choose a fairly faint color so they don’t dominate the chart and you can
- 03:20 explore vertical gridlines as well. Trend lines and error bars about more advanced statistical analysis. Now I hope that you notice that we’re
- 03:29 trying to add information to our chart without adding to its confusion. It’s good practise to let users know what the charts is telling them with
- 03:36 as much detail you can add without clutter because the chart should effectively explain itself without you there to explain it to someone.
- 03:43 So I’m happy with those chart elements. If we go to the next slide, notice that we have what looks like different charts but they have similar
- 03:50 data. So let’s do some fixing. First, let’s make them look the same. If I select chart 1 on the left, the design tab, chart layouts group, I’m
- 03:59 going to click and select layout 3. I click the second chart on the right and apply the same chart layout. Now to change the chart styles, I
- 04:07 notice with the chart on the left selected, that this particular chart style is highlighted in the chart styles group and I’m happy with those
- 04:13 colors so I select the chart on the right, and apply that same style but it’s not exactly the same. A possibility is that the chart on the left
- 04:21 was actually changed sometime after that style was first applied so reapply the style, and there it is. Now to fix the scales; charts with similar
- 04:30 data must be compared with similar scales and it drives me crazy to see chart scales all out of whack or changing as a presentation advances.
- 04:37 So I find the chart that has the greatest scale range for the data and use the upper limit of that data for the other chart. So notice as I click on
- 04:46 the axis here, the little bounding box changes to show it’s selected. If I double click this, the format axis dialog box appears and that’s the
- 04:54 same as if I right click and select format axis menu item. Now the dialog box is modeless which means that you can click around the
- 05:01 chart and it will remain open. On the axis options tab, we have axis options. The data on one chart ranges from 0 to 40 while the other
- 05:10 ranges from 0 to 25 so I select the maximum box, click the fixed radio button, type in 40, and press TAB to set that. If I press ENTER it’s
- 05:21 likely that the dialog box would actually close. I also want to fix the gridline spacing. Make the major unit 10 and press TAB and that’s much
- 05:30 better. Further down in this dialog box we have items such as values in reverse order, logarithmic scale, which is base 10 in this case,
- 05:40 if it was turned on. The increment is actually an order of magnitude, rather than a linear scale and an example is the Richter scale for
- 05:46 earthquakes, or we could change the display units, so, for example, if we had really big numbers but I don’t want to do that in this case.
- 05:54 Let’s also look at tick marks; the major or minor tick marks can be inside or outside of the axis. I don’t worry about minor ones but I’ll make the
- 06:04 major ones on the outside and there they are and I scrolled in there with the scroll wheel of my mouse and the CTRL key to be able to see
- 06:11 that. The horizontal axis crosses at, and that’s where the x axis crosses the y. Finally let’s look at the legend which is turned on. So if we go
- 06:20 back to the layout tab on the ribbon and click the legend drop down arrow, we saw earlier on that I selected legend at right and I’m happy with
- 06:29 that although it does push the chart over and uses more of the slide area. Note that the changes we make to a particular chart need to
- 06:36 be made to both charts to keep them comparable. So in summary, there’s just so much to charting; It’s often easier to use a chart
- 06:42 layout and a style to quickly format it and let the power of both Excel and PowerPoint do the work for you. But you can also access many options
- 06:50 in the ribbon. Remember the dialog box works on the context of what you have selected on the chart, or you can right click on an item and
- 06:58 select the appropriate menu item. Good luck with charts; they’re powerful when constructed and displayed well.
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