Excel 2007 is a powerful spreadsheet application that can be used for a variety of tasks, including creating charts. Charts can be used to display data in a visually appealing way, and they can be a useful tool for communicating information. In this article, we will show you how to create attractive charts in Excel 2007. The first step is to select the data that you want to include in the chart. You can do this by selecting the cells that contain the data or by using the selection tools on the toolbar. Once you have selected the data, you need to decide what type of chart you want to create. There are several types of charts available in Excel 2007, including pie charts, bar graphs, line graphs, and scatter plots. Once you have decided which type of chart you want to create, you need to specify its properties. The properties of a chart include its title and subtitle, its axis labels and titles, and its gridlines. You can also specify whether or not the chart should be interactive (i.e., allow users to drag it around). Once you have specified all of theChart’s properties, it is time to create your chart layout. The layout consists of two parts: the plot area and the legend area. The plot area contains your chart’s actual data plot(s), while the legend area contains any text or labels that will accompany your chart(s). To create your layout, first click on the Plot Area tab on the ribbon toolbar (or use shortcut keys: Ctrl+P). This will open up your plot area’s Properties dialog box (see Figure 1). Here, you need to specify which columns should appear in your plot area and which rows should appear in your legend area (see Figure 2). You also need to specify how many plots should appear in each column and how many plots should appear in each row (see Figure 3). Finally, click on OKto close out Properties dialog box and return to ..
First highlight the data you want to chart on your Excel spreadsheet.
Now that we have the correct data selected we need to click Insert on The Ribbon. Now select Charts and decide what type of chart you want to represent the data. I usually experiment at this point because you can always undo a certain selection.
In this example I used the Exploding Pie Chart. After you make your selection you will get a nice preview of how it looks. Now we can take this chart and move it anywhere on the Excel document.
Next we want to tweak it a bit more by going to the Design tab in The Ribbon and clicking on Quick Layout. Here we can choose from different types of layouts for the chart. Again here you can experiment until you get the right fit.
This is the layout I ended up with. Now lets individualize the chart title by right clicking “Chart Title” and selecting Edit Text.
That is all there is to it! As you can see we have a nice looking chart to help everyone at the meeting understand the data and statistic easier. Later this week I will go over adding details to the chart.
**Also, for you Keyboard Ninja’s a quicker way to execute this process is to highlight the data on your spreadsheet and hit the F11 key. This will bring up a separate “Chart Tab” where you can then manipulate the appearance and add details.
