Creating a Chart in Excel
There are two kinds of charts, an embedded chart and a chart sheet. The only difference is how they are presented; an embedded chart is placed as an object directly on top of your spreadsheet; a chart sheet gives the chart its own "page" in your workbook. This document will show you how to make both kinds of charts.
In this tutorial, we create a small grade sheet with an accompanying chart. Double click to launch Excel and open a new document.
Enter the information as seen in the accompanying window (the students Annie, Bob, Christy, and David across Row 1, and their respective grades in rows 2, 3, 4, 5).
Hold down the mouse button in cell A1 ("Annie") to highlight it, and drag the cursor diagonally to cell D5 (David's score of 87) until you highlight all the information.
Single-click on the CHART WIZARD button in the toolbar.
Step 1 of the Chart Wizard appears.
The STANDARD TYPES and CUSTOM TYPES tabs give you a wide variety of chart formats to select.
Click and hold down the mouse button on the PRESS AND HOLD... button and a sample chart pops up on the right portion of the window.
Click once to select the desired format of your chart (I chose the default bar graph) and click the NEXT button.
The Wizard advances to Step 2: Source Data.
This window allows you to alter which cells you want to make up the graph (Data Range tab), and add or delete series of data (Series tab).
If the chart preview looks acceptable, you do not need to change anything in this step. Simply click on the NEXT button to continue.
However, if you do want to make changes:
You can change the range of cells by clicking in the DATA RANGE box and selecting the desired cells on your worksheet. (To move the Chart Wizard window out of your way temporarily, click the Collapse Window button; click it again to make the window full-size again.)
If you click on the SERIES tab, you can add and delete series and specify individual names and data ranges for each series. Series are data contained in each row or column, depending on which is selected in the Data Range tab.
Step 3 of the Wizard allows you to customize the look of your chart.
There are tabs for Titles, Axes, Gridlines, Legend, Data Labels, and Data Table.
Except for the Titles tab which lets you type in labels, the other options allow you to turn on or off via radio buttons or check boxes certain aspects of the chart. Click once the NEXT button when you are finished with this step.
Step 4 of the Wizard enables you to decide the location your chart will reside. You have two options:
- As an object embedded in an existing worksheet (default)
- As a separate worksheet in your workbook
When you have decided, press the FINISH button to have Excel draw the chart.
Excel draws the chart either on top of your worksheet or on a new sheet, depending on the option you choose in the previous step.
This is an example of a chart created in a new worksheet
This is an example of a chart embedded within an existing worksheet.
And you're done! The chart you just made is still fully customizable: each component of the chart is able to be double-clicked on and modified without re-entering the Chart Wizard (for example: X and Y axis labels, background and bar color, legend, font size and type, chart width, chart height, etc.)
You can also access options to customize the chart via the Formatting Palette. As long as the chart is selected (or you are on the chart's worksheet, if you placed it on its own worksheet), the Formatting Palette gives you the same options as the above paragraph mentioned without needing to navigate the menus called up by double-clicking.
Now you may want to check out how to use Excel as a database management system:
Written by Matthew Dull '01; Updated for 2004 by Jordan McDonnell '08