Formatting Charts and Graphs - Part 2

Locked lesson.

Upgrade

About this lesson

Explore the extensive formatting options available on the Chart Options contextual ribbon. Change the color scheme, switch the data around, add data labels, axis labels, chart titles and a legend.

Quick reference

Formatting Charts and Graphs - Part 2

In Part 2 of this lesson we are going to continue formatting the clustered column, sunburst and map charts. We will add trendlines, format the data series, explore chart styles, color gradients and also see how to link to the original source data in Excel. 

When to use

All charts in PowerPoint should be formatted to some extent to make them relevent to the data that's represented. 

Instructions

Clustered Column Chart - Add a Trendline

  1. Click on the chart. 
  2. Click the + button to the right of the chart. 
  3. Select Trendline. 
  4. Choose the 'Webinar' series. 

Sunburst Chart - Formatting

Chart Styles

Chart Styles are a one-click option to apply multiple chart elements quickly. 

  1. Click on the chart. 
  2. From the Chart Design tab, in the Chart Styles group, select a Chart Style. 
Edit Data
  1. Click on the chart. 
  2. From the Chart Design tab, in the Data group, select Edit Data. 
  3. Click Edit Data. 
  4. Change 'United Kingdom' to UK and 'United States of America' to 'USA. 
Add a Chart Title

We can modify the default chart title or we can add our own using a text box. 

  1. Click on the Chart Title. 
  2. Change the title to 'Sales (Quantity) by Category'. 
  3. Or, from the Insert tab, in the Text group, select Text box. 
  4. Draw a text box and add a title. 
Format Data Labels
  1. Click on the Data Labels on the chart to select. 
  2. Right-click and select Format Data Labels. 
  3. In the Label Options area select Values. 
  4. Click the drop-down arrow next to Separator. 
  5. Select Comma. 
  6. Expand the Number section. 
  7. Click the drop-down arrow under General. 
  8. Select Number from the list. 
  9. Decrease the decimal place to 0. 
  10. Select Use 1000 Separator. 
Chart Outline
  1. Select the chart. 
  2. From the Format tab, in the Shapes Styles group, click Shape Outline. 
  3. Choose a color from the palette. 
Add Text
  1. From the Insert tab, in the Text group, select Text box. 
  2. Draw a text box.
  3. Type =lorem(3,3) to add 'dummy' text. 
Link to an Excel File

Add a link back to the original Excel data file. 

  1. From the Insert tab, in the Text group, select Object. 
  2. Select Create from file. 
  3. Click Browse. 
  4. Navigate to the folder where the Excel fil to link to is stored. 
  5. Click OK. 
  6. Select Display as icon. 
  7. Click OK. 

Map Chart - Formatting

Apply a 3-Color Gradient
  1. Right-click on the map chart. 
  2. Select Format Data Series. 
  3. From the Series Options area, in the Series Color group, select Diverging 3-color. 
  4. Change the Minimum vale color to light pink. 
  5. Change the Midpoint value color to blue. 
  6. Chane the Maximum value color to dark pink. 
Add Map Labels. 
  1. Right-click on the map chart. 
  2. Select Format Data Series. 
  3. From the Series Options area, in the Series Options group, select the drop-down under Map Labels. 
  4. Choose Best fit only. 
Move the Legend
  1. Select the chart. 
  2. Click the + button to the right of the chart. 
  3. Select Legend and select Right. 

Hints & tips

  • Take some time to right-click on different chart elements and explore the multitude of customization options available. 
Login to download
  • 00:04 Welcome back to part two, where this lesson continues.
  • 00:07 On what you can also do is add things like trendlines.
  • 00:12 So again, if I click the little plus at the side,
  • 00:15 I have a Trendline option in here.
  • 00:17 And you can choose which series you want your trendline based on.
  • 00:21 So maybe I'm interested in looking at the trend for webinars, click on OK.
  • 00:27 And it's going to add that line in and it also adds the line to the legend.
  • 00:32 And of course, if you wanted to format this, just make sure that you click on
  • 00:36 the line and use your format options, and you can change the color of that line.
  • 00:41 So all of the formatting we've done so far is very manual.
  • 00:44 We've manually modified each of the elements.
  • 00:48 Now, if you're in a rush or you are a little bit lazy,
  • 00:51 if you jump onto the Chart Design tab, you do have some chart styles in here.
  • 00:55 Which as I hover over,
  • 00:56 you can see a live preview as to what each of those is going to look like.
  • 01:00 And this turns off or on various different chart elements.
  • 01:05 So if you see one in there that takes your fancy, then by all means,
  • 01:09 use that to quickly apply formatting to your chart.
  • 01:12 In general,
  • 01:13 I prefer to have a little bit more control over how my chart's formatted.
  • 01:17 The final thing to do here is just update this chart title.
  • 01:20 Now that I've changed my data to January to March, and
  • 01:24 I think I've done with this chart.
  • 01:28 Let's move on to the next chart.
  • 01:31 So I don't need to do as much formatting to this.
  • 01:33 It's looking pretty good already, but
  • 01:35 something I do want to do is I want to edit this data.
  • 01:38 So I'm going to click on the chart up to Chart Design and
  • 01:42 into the Edit Data option.
  • 01:44 And what I actually what I want to do here is, I'm going to change some of these
  • 01:49 regions just to make their labels a little bit shorter, so
  • 01:52 they fit on the chart a little bit better.
  • 01:55 So let's changed United Arab Empire to UAE,
  • 01:59 United Kingdom to UK, and United States to USA.
  • 02:03 And I'm actually going to delete out this entry just here.
  • 02:08 And you'll see that any changes that I make are immediately reflected in
  • 02:12 that chart.
  • 02:13 Now I'm probably going to want to add a chart title in here,
  • 02:18 Sales Quantity by Country.
  • 02:21 And I want to make sure that I change this font to white, so that it stands out.
  • 02:26 And one of the things I don't particularly like with this type of chart is that
  • 02:30 the title is very close to the chart.
  • 02:33 So in this particular circumstance, I might decide that
  • 02:36 to turn off that chart title, and maybe just add my own text box at the top.
  • 02:41 Now one thing that I do want to display on this chart is the value.
  • 02:46 So if I click on these data labels, right click my mouse and say Format Data Labels.
  • 02:52 I can choose from this menu what I want to display on this chart.
  • 02:56 So currently I only have the category name, which is the country name,
  • 03:00 essentially, but I can also choose to display the value.
  • 03:04 And I can choose how I want that value separated from the country name.
  • 03:08 So currently I'm using a comma, but you could have semi colon period, so
  • 03:13 on and so forth.
  • 03:14 I can also choose how I want that number to be displayed.
  • 03:17 So if I want it in currency format, I can.
  • 03:21 In this case, these are the quantities.
  • 03:24 So I'm going to say number, I'm going to take the decimal places down to zero,
  • 03:29 but I am going to use a 1000 separator.
  • 03:31 Another thing I'm not particularly keen on here, is this white outline,
  • 03:35 it's a little bit harsh for me.
  • 03:37 So let's select the charts, I could go to Chart Design and
  • 03:41 take a look at some of the options that I have in here.
  • 03:45 Alternatively, I could go to Format and
  • 03:47 just change that outline to something a bit darker.
  • 03:52 And I think that looks a lot nicer.
  • 03:54 So now, what I'm going to do is just resize this chart,
  • 03:57 make it a little bit smaller and position this over on the left hand side.
  • 04:02 I'm then going to add some text and
  • 04:04 also a link back to the original Excel spreadsheet.
  • 04:07 So the text I've added is just some test tags using that Lorem script in
  • 04:12 a text box.
  • 04:13 We've seen how to do that many times.
  • 04:15 And what I want underneath is a little link to the Excel workbook.
  • 04:19 So if we jump up to Insert, I can choose to insert an object and link to a file.
  • 04:27 So I'm going to say Create from file.
  • 04:30 And then I'm going to browse for
  • 04:32 the Excel spreadsheet that contains this source data.
  • 04:35 So let's click on Browse.
  • 04:37 There is my Excel spreadsheet, click on OK.
  • 04:41 And I'm going to choose to display this as an icon, click on OK.
  • 04:46 And there we have our Excel icon.
  • 04:48 And because the text for this file is dark text and we have a dark background,
  • 04:53 I'm just going to insert create shape.
  • 05:00 And I'm going to fill the shape with a white fill.
  • 05:04 And then I'm going to move my little icon on top of this shape.
  • 05:08 And remember, if when you move it, it goes underneath the shape,
  • 05:12 you need to use your Arrange options up here to bring that to the front
  • 05:20 Some final chart that I need to format here is the map chart.
  • 05:23 And we don't really need to do a great deal to this one.
  • 05:26 But one thing that I do want to do is I want to change the chart design and
  • 05:30 I also want to change the colors.
  • 05:32 So let's click on the chart up to Chart Design, and
  • 05:36 I'm going to go straight to my Chart Styles.
  • 05:39 Now I only have four of them.
  • 05:40 You can see as I hover over what those different chart styles look like.
  • 05:44 And I'm going to go for this second one just here, so
  • 05:47 I can see the boundaries of the countries a little bit clearer.
  • 05:51 I'm going to resize that because this one is slightly smaller, and
  • 05:55 then I'm going to change the color.
  • 05:57 Now, I have a change color drop down just here and if I go through these different
  • 06:01 palettes, you can see how those are going to look when I apply them.
  • 06:04 So just remember that the first color listed in the palette is going to
  • 06:08 be the predominant color.
  • 06:09 Now I actually want to show my color in a slightly different way.
  • 06:14 So let's right click on the chart and go down to Format Data Series.
  • 06:20 Now you can see the bottom here where we have serious color,
  • 06:23 it's using a two color scale.
  • 06:26 And it's grading the map based on the values from a light gray to a darker gray.
  • 06:32 Now I'm going to change this to three colors and
  • 06:35 then I'm going to choose the colors that I want to use.
  • 06:38 So for my minimum values, I'm going to go for this light pink color.
  • 06:43 For my middle value, I'm going to have this as a blue color.
  • 06:48 As of my highest value, I'm going to go for a dark pink color.
  • 06:52 Let's close down this panel.
  • 06:55 And you can see that I've actually lost my chart style as I've done that.
  • 06:59 So let's make sure we reapply it.
  • 07:02 And there we go, that looks a lot nicer.
  • 07:05 There's something else I could do from this Format Data Series menu is,
  • 07:09 I could choose to add map labels.
  • 07:11 So I'm going to go for best fit only.
  • 07:14 And what that essentially means is that where it can, it will add the labels for
  • 07:18 the different countries.
  • 07:19 If there's not enough room, then it's going to exclude those.
  • 07:22 So that might be something that you want to turn off or on.
  • 07:26 Final couple of things I want to do here, my little legend at the top,
  • 07:30 I want to make sure that I change that font to white so that it stands out.
  • 07:34 And I might even choose to display this over on the right-hand side instead.
  • 07:40 The final thing to do here is add a chart title and we are pretty much done.
  • 07:46 The final thing I might want to do is just resize this.
  • 07:48 Just make it a little bit smaller, and
  • 07:51 then move that across to the middle, but that is it.
  • 07:55 As you can see, there are so
  • 07:56 many different options when it comes to formatting your charts.
  • 07:59 I definitely encourage you to practice inserting charts and
  • 08:02 then having a little play around with the options that you have.
  • 08:05 Not only on the ribbons or in those little pop out menus, but
  • 08:08 also in the right click contextual menus.
  • 08:11 That's it for now, I will see you in the next lesson.

Lesson notes are only available for subscribers.

Gift this course