Editing Chart Data

Editing the data from our chart is easy.
To do this, first select the chart in your document.
Click the “Edit Data” button in the “Design” contextual tab, under “Chart Tools”.

This opens the spreadsheet that contains the data in our chart.
Change the data, and close the spreadsheet.
The changes are immediately applied in our chart.

Formatting and layout

We have a lot of options to change the formatting and the layout of our graph.
I will discuss some of them here, but the rest you must try yourself.

To change the chart type, you must first select the chart, and in the “Chart Tools” contextual tab, select “Design”.
Click the “Change Chart Type” button which is at the extreme left of the Ribbon.
This opens the dialog “Change Chart Type”.
Select a different chart type, and click the OK button.

To change the style, we click the “Scroll up” (1), “Scroll under” (2) or “More” (3) buttons in the Ribbon, and select a style by clicking on it.

Then I add a chart title.
I select the “Layout” contextual tab in the ribbon.
Select the “Chart Title” option. This opens a drop-down menu with three options: None – Centered Overlay Title – Above chart.
I select the latter option, “Above Chart”.
The first is obvious and, the second one places the title on the chart.
Once you have made a choice, you can start typing.
You do not need to select the text in the text box.
After entering the title, click anywhere outside it.

With the chart still selected, you can possibly go and see how your title would look like if you had chosen the second option (centered overlay title) in the drop-down menu of the chart titles. You can change this at any time if you so wish.

You can adjust the titles of the horizontal and vertical axis but this could create confusion in the chart.
Click on the “Axis Titles” button in the “Layout” contextual tab.
This opens a drop-down menu with two options.
One is for the primary horizontal axis, and one for the primary vertical axis.
The first gives us two more options: “None” or “Title under axis”, both of which are quite clear.
The second option also gives us four options that are all quite clear.

You can also apply a “Legend,” by clicking the “Legend” button in the “Layout” contextual tab.
When we click on it, we have eight options.
The first seven seem quite clear to me and, the eighth one, which is “More legend options” opens a dialog box where we have the following settings: “Legend Options “, “Fill”, “Border Color”, “Border Style”,”Shadow” and “Glow and soft edges”.
These seem quite clear.
Click the “Close” button in the dialog box, when you have finished specifying your settings.

Then, we also have the “Data Labels” button in the “Layout” contextual tab.
With this button we can see the data from our table, displayed in our chart.
We, again, have a few options that all seem quite clear. If they are not clear to you, you can try them out and then you’ll understand.
In this example I’ve selected the option, “Bottom” for the alignment.

Then, we have the “Data Table” button in the “Layout” contextual tab.
When we click on this we have three options which place the table from the spreadsheet below the chart.
Since I have chosen the “Data Label” “Bottom”, I need to choose “None”.
I do this so that the data from my table does not repeat twice.

We also have the button, “Axes”.
Again, I have two options, the horizontal axis with five sub-options and, the vertical axis with seven options.

All of them are quite clear.
In this example I select “None” for the horizontal axis because the data from the table is displayed at the end of the bar.

Then, we have the “Gridlines” button and, here, all the options are quite clear.
We also have the “Plot Area” button.
When we click it, we have three options, i.e, “None”, “Show Plot Area”, and “More Plot Area options”. Again, all these options are quite clear.
I select the “More plot area options” option and, you can select whatever options you want and click the “Close” button.

Lastly we have the “Format” contextual tab.
Again, we have a whole bunch of options to change the format our chart.
They are far too many to mention.
Remember this, if you wish to modify any part of the layout of your chart, first select the part you wish to modify and then select the option you wish to apply.
If you wish to undo the change, then click the “Undo” button on the “Quick Access toolbar”, or press the Z button on your keyboard while keeping the Ctrl key pressed.

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