Creating “Charts”

Excel allows us to create charts using data from our “Spreadsheet”.

This is useful when we want to make visual presentations for meetings, reviews, reports etc.

Excel has developed a wizard that can assist in adding these easily to our “Spreadsheet”.
To create a graph, we first select the “Range” including the column and row titles, that we want to format.

Then click on the “Chart Wizard” button on the menubar   , and select “Insert” – “Chart”.
This opens the “Chart Wizard” (“Chart Wizard”) Dialog box:

This is a simple step by step process in which we type, “Range”, additional options and the location of our chart.

In the first window of the “Chart Wizard”, select the chart type on the left, and the “Chart sub-type” on the right.

When we press the “Press and Hold to View Sample” button, we see an example of how our chart will look.

When you’re satisfied, click the “Next” button.

In the next screen of the wizard, we can adjust our chart if we wish, by clicking on the button beside the “Data range” box.

In this window you determine whether you want to display the series as rows or columns in the “Chart”.

Click “Next” to continue.

In the third window, we select the tab with the option in which we want to make changes.

Click the appropriate tab to set the desired options for your “Chart”.

In the “Title” tab, You can enter a “Chart” title, and labels for the horizontal (X axis), and
vertical (Y axis).

In the “Axes” tab, we give labels for X and Y axes and specify whether we want to show or hide them.

In the “Grid Lines” tab, we determine whether we want to display lines in our “Chart” or not.

In the “Legend” tab, we determine whether we would like to add a legend to our chart, and where we want to place these.

In the “Data Labels” tab, we can determine whether we want the labels or the figures to appear in our “Chart” for each value.

In the “DataTable” tab, we can determine whether our table, with numerical data, is to be included in our “Chart” or not.

When you’re done, click Next.

In the last window we must make a choice whether we want to show the “Chart” in a separate “Worksheet” or insert into an existing “Worksheet “.

If you choose the first option, give the “Worksheet” a name.

If you choose the second, then you can choose from the dropdown menu.

Make a selection and click “Finish”.

Move and resize “Chart”

When you’ve chosen your “chart” to display in an existing “Worksheet”, you can move and resize it.

Click in the white portion of the “Chart” to select it in its entirety.

You will see that the whole “Chart” is selected and 8 black squares are displayed around the “Chart”.

In order to adjust the size now, we click and drag one of these cubes.

To move the “Chart” we click an empty spot in the “Chart”, and we can drag the “Chart” to the desired location (our mouse pointer changes to a cross).

The “Chart toolbar” and layout of “Charts”

		graph objects
	“Edit object”			chart / table by row
	Chart type “			chart / table by to column
	“Show / Hide Legend”			rotate text clockwise
	“Show /Hide Data Table”			rotate text anticlockwise

The “Chart toolbar” will automatically appear when we have created our “Chart”.

When we have created a “Chart” in an existing worksheet, when we click on this worksheet, this toolbar will disappear and when we select the “Chart”, the toolbar will reappear.

If you have closed the toolbar, and you want to see it again, click “View” in the menu bar – “Toolbars” and choose “Chart” (“Chart”) from the list.

We take a closer look at the buttons in our “Worksheet”.

The first, the drop-down menu, on the far left contains a list of almost every object in our “Chart”.

We can select an object by clicking it in our “Chart”, or by selecting it in the dropdown menu.

Next to it, we find the “Edit object” button. We use this button to open a dialog that allows us to edit the selected object.

We also have the “chart type” that allows us, by clicking on the black arrow, to change the type of “Chart” anytime.

Next is the “Show/Hide Legend” button which shows or hides the Legendwhen clicked.
Then comes the “Show/Hide Data Table” button. When we click this, the data table is displayed or hidden.

We can determine how the data is mapped with the following two buttons “Chart / table by row” or “Chart/Table by column”

And the last two buttons are for rotating the text objects in your “Chart”.

Printing of “Chart”

To print only the “Chart” that is inserted into an existing “Worksheet”, without other data, we select the entire “Chart” and click the “Print” button in the “Standard toolbar”.

However, if we wish to print the “Chart” and the rest of the data from our “Worksheet”, we first click a cell in the “Worksheet”, and only then click the “Print” button in the “Standard toolbar”.

To print a “Chart” in its own “Worksheet”, we first select the “Worksheet” and then click the “Print” button in the “Standard toolbar”.

Delete “Chart”

To delete a “Chart” in an existing ‘Worksheet”, we first select the “Chart” and then click on the “Delete” button on our keyboard.

To delete a “Chart” in its own “Worksheet”,simply delete the “Worksheet”.

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