Charts

Charts are a great way of presenting summary data in a very readable fashion. Charts in Excel can be extremely complicated and cover many different types and designs which will show certain characteristics of you underlying data. There are many great Excel charting sites, but here are just two.

Jon Peltier's Website

Debra Dalgleish's Website

Below, we create a very simple column chart using a small data range and Excel's Chart wizard functionality.er="1" src="gui/guiimages/chartsource.jpg" width="245" height="108">

Wizard Step 1

From simply highlighting the above data and pressing the 'Press and hold to view sample button', (below), you can see the makings of a simple column chart in the 'sample' window.

Wizard Step 2

Here we can correct any anomalies in Excel's guess at the Data Range. You will notice it had guessed at including column A as data so this can be easily corrected in the Data Range box, (in truth we should only have selected the range B2:D5 in the first place and Excel would almost certainly have made the correct guess). Looking at the example shows it is now corrected.

On the 'Series' tab of the same wizard step we can correct the labels for the series 1, 2 and 3. Also we add the Category (X) axis labels which are in A2:A5. Now it looks nearly complete. For a simple chart, just the chart and axis titles to add.

Wizard Step 3

The main chart title can be entered here together with the category and series titles. Several other tabs exist at this step to control secondary axis, gridlines, etc, but we are only creating a simple chart so this will suffice

Wizard Step 4

This dialog asks for the chart location, there are two choices. As a chart sheet, which you can name here too, or as an embedded chart on a worksheet which can be selected from the dropdown

The resulting embedded chart

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