Advanced Chart Options

Quick reference

• 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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