Chart Advisor is a nifty add-in for Microsoft Excel 2007 that makes creating charts a breeze. Whether you need to create a simple bar chart, line graph, or pie chart, Chart Advisor can help you get the job done quickly and easily. To get started, open Excel 2007 and click on the Insert tab. In the search box at the top of the window, type “Chart Advisor” and press Enter. The Chart Advisor dialog box will appear. Click on the Charts button in this dialog box to open the Chart Wizard. This wizard will help you select which type of chart you want to create. For our example, we’ll select the Bar Chart option. Next, we’ll need to specify some basic information about our chart. First, we’ll need to choose which data series we want to include in our chart. In our example, we’ll select Sales Data from our worksheet. We also need to specify how many bars or columns we want our chart to have (in this case, two). Finally, we’ll specify what kind of data should be displayed in each bar or column (in this case, numeric values). Once we’ve completed these steps, it’s time to start creating our chart! To do so, click on the Start Drawing button in the Chart Wizard toolbar and then start filling in yourchart’s details usingthe controls that appear onscreen. For example: Sales Data: Numeric ValuesBar Width: 2Column Width: 2Bars per Row: 2Start Drawing: YesData Labels: NoData Formatting: NoChart Type: BarChartSeries Name: SalesData ..
Note: Remember this is a prototype and under development and may not work perfectly with your system.
Install Chart Advisor
Because this is an Office Labs prototype you will need to participate in Usage Metrics and Auto Update. Continue through the installation wizard to complete the process.
After the installation is complete open Excel and you will see it under the Insert tab in the ribbon.
Using Chart Advisor
Here we will take a look at using Chart Advisor. Open up an Excel spreadsheet and select the data you want to to create a chart on. In this example we’re using monthly sales figures for tools and supplies. After you have highlighted the cells click on Chart Advisor under the Insert tab.
Give it an moment while Chart Advisor analyzes the data and recommends appropriate charts.
Hover over the different suggestions at the top to get a more detailed view of how it will look.
The amount of charts you have to choose from will be determined by the data cells you select. Also notice they are sorted by relevance.
Just hover the pointer over the percentage box on each suggestion to get a detailed formula of why it got its score.
You can filter data to further modify the charts.
You can further tweak the chart under Modify Chart and change data positions, exclude data, etc.
When done configuring the chart just click the Insert Chart button to place it into the spreadsheet.
If you are looking for a way to speed up how you create charts and graphs in your Excel presentations then you might want to check out this add-on.
Download Chart Advisor from Office Labs
