Select Data For Chart Excel How To Create Different

And with that recognition too, you realize that when you create a chart sometimes it doesnt look the way you want.

They also happen to be one of the most powerful and easy-to-use features in Microsoft Excel for Mac.

Select Data For Chart Excel How To Create Different

Let Dennis Taylor show you how to create different kinds of Excel charts, from column, bar, and line charts to doughnuts and scatter charts, and decide which type works best for your data.

Learn how to fine-tune your charts colors and style; add titles, labels, and legends; insert shapes and pictures; and pull data from multiple sources.

Along the way, Dennis offers shortcuts and tips for being more productive and efficient.

Dennis has experience working as an author, speaker, seminar leader, and facilitator.

Since the mid-90s, he has been the authorpresenter of numerous Excel video and online courses and has traveled throughout the U.S.

Canada presenting over 300 seminars and classes.

He has authored or co-authored multiple books on spreadsheet software and has presented over 500 Excel webinars to a diversity of audiences.

Dennis has worked with hundreds of different corporations and governmental agencies as well as colleges and universities.

In Excel, a chart means youve got numeric data that youd like to depict graphically.

Weve got some numbers over here on this Worksheet, its called Data Selection.

Now, we might not want to show all the numbers here and often if youve got totals and details together, its probably not a great idea to show both of them.

What you wouldnt necessarily know at first is that adjacent labels for example, these labels right here that describe the data in the columns below, and the labels that we see in column A that describe the data in the rows to the right, this information can be used intelligently in charts.

And in the two examples we see to the right we do see how those are being used.

And most of the time when youre selecting data to go into a chart, its contiguous data in one rectangular grouping.

In this case lets say we do not want the totals along with the detail, just the detail itself for each of the six months for the four regions.

Column, probably the most common chart type in Excel and Clustered Column within that, the most common type.

But lets say as we look at it briefly here weve got a Legend across the bottom that explains what each of the colors mean.

The numbers down the left hand side, need a description perhaps but with the data nearby we could forgo that even.

Now, I want to show you what would happen if we did include the totals.

I think most of the time it makes for an unsatisfactory chart.

Go back to Insert and choose Column and Clustered and there we see whats happening.

So, thats why the recommendation was earlier, dont mix totals and details together.

Certainly not wrong in one sense because you can do it but not recommended.

Select Data For Chart Excel Mac