Editing Chart Data

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

This opens the spreadsheet that contains the data that is included in our “Chart”.
Modify the data and close the spreadsheet.
The changes are applied immediately to our “Chart”.
If you wish to remove information from a “Chart”, you do not need to open the “Chart” in “Excel” but, you can select the information in the “Chart” and press the “Delete” key on your keyboard.

Formatting and layout:

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

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

To change the style, we click the “Scroll up”, “Scroll down” or drop-down menu buttons in the “Ribbon” (1) and select a style by clicking on it.

Then we add a “Chart Title”.
Select the “Layout” contextual tab in the “Ribbon” and click the “Chart Title”.
This opens a drop-down menu with three options: “None”, “Centered Overlayed Title” and “Above Chart”.
Select the “Above Chart” option.
The first option is obvious, and the second one places the title in the “Chart”.
Once you have made a choice, you can start typing.
You do not need to add it as text in a text box.
If you have finished typing 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 Overlayed Title”) in the drop-down menu of the “Chart Title”. You can change this at any time, if you wish to do so.

If they create confusion in the “Chart”, then you can adjust the titles of the horizontal and vertical axis.
Click on the “Axis Titles” button in the “Layout” contextual tab .
This opens a drop-down menu with two options.
One for the primary horizontal axis and one for the primary vertical axis.
The first gives us two more options: “None”, or “Title below Axis”. Both of which, are quite clear to me.
And the second gives us four options which are all also quite clear.

Then I adjust the “Legend”, by clicking the “Legend” in the “Layout” contextual tab.
When we click on it, we have eight options.
The first seven seem clear to me, and the eighth one which is “More Legend options”, opens a dialog box where we have the settings for: “Legend Options”, which are “Fill”, “Border Color”, “Border Styles” and “Shadow”.
All these look clear to me .
Click the “Close” button in the dialog box when you have finished selecting your settings.

We also have the “Data Labels” button in the “Layout” contextual tab.
With the help of this button, we can see the data from our table displayed in our “Chart”.
Again, we have a few options which are all quite clear to me. If this is not the case with you, you should try all of them out.

Then we have the “Data Table” button in the contextual “Layout” tab.
When we click on this we have three options. This places the table from the spreadsheet below the “Chart”.

We then have the “Axes” button.
Again, I have two options, the horizontal axis with five options and the vertical axis with seven options.
All these seem quite clear to me.

After this, we have the “Gridlines” button which is, again, quite clear.

We also have the “Plot Area” button.
When we click it we have three options, “None”, “Show Plot Area”, and “More options for Plot Area.” These seem clear to me.

And then we have the “Format” contextual tab .
Again, we have a whole bunch of options to format our “Chart” which are far too many to mention.
Remember this. If you wish to change the layout of any part of your “Chart”, first select the part you wish to modify and then select the option you wish to set.
If you do not like the change, then click the “Undo” button in the “Quick Access” toolbar, or press the Z key on your keyboard while keeping the Ctrl key pressed.

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