![]() Her line then changes from blue to orange. In short, just look for the “Format” option.Īfter selecting “Format Data Series,” Lucy clicks the paint can for the color and then selects orange. When she’s clicked on the item that she wants to change, she’ll right-click on the line and select “Format Data Series.”Ī quick note: The exact language here can vary depending on what portion of the chart you’re clicked into (for example, if you’re changing the white space around the chart, it’ll say “Format Chart Area”). So, if Lucy wants to change the line from orange to blue, she should click directly on the line-so that those formatting dots appear all around it. Here’s the important thing to remember about customizing a chart within Excel: You should click directly on the portion of the chart that you want to edit. Customize your chartĪt this point, the chart is created-and, you can stop here if you’re happy with it.īut, since Lucy works in marketing, she wants to make some changes to the colors to match her company’s branding, as well as add axis titles and a legend to make her point explicitly clear. If you see a huge spike that you weren’t expecting or anything else that makes you hesitant, it’s best to return to your original data set to confirm there aren’t any errors that you didn’t catch the first time. But, when you’re working with a much larger set of data, mistakes can slip past much easier. In this case, since we’re working with such a small data set, it’s not a huge issue. Now with her chart is created, it's a good time for Lucy to take another quick peek and make sure nothing is unexpected or looks out of place. So, she selects a line chart from those options.Īfter doing so, her chart instantly appears within the same tab of her Excel workbook. In this case, because Lucy wants to display a trend in her data over time, she knows that a line chart is probably her best bet. This isn’t foolproof, but it can certainly help to give you some direction. If you’re unsure what type of chart to use, you can click the “Recommended Charts” button to see options that Excel suggests based on what appears in your data. Want to learn more about column charts in particular? Check out this video. Once her data is highlighted, she’ll head to the “Insert” menu in the ribbon and select what type of chart she wants to use to display her data.Įxcel offers tons of different types of charts to choose from, including: ![]() To do so, she’ll highlight all of the data (including column headers!) she wants included in her chart. With her data cleaned up, Lucy is ready to insert her chart into her spreadsheet. Go to the edit menu at the top of the page, and then type in the mistake you want to find and what it should be replaced with.įor example, if Lucy realized she spelled “September” as “Setpember” she could use this feature to replace all instances where it’s spelled incorrectly. If you spot an issue, use Excel’s “find and replace” feature to correct all instances of that error. TIP: Checking over data is pretty simple when you have a really small data set like Lucy, but it can become a little more cumbersome when you have hundreds or thousands of rows of data. In this case, it’s pretty straightforward: Lucy has a column header for the month and a column header for the number of email subscribers. ![]() You should also ensure that you have descriptive column headers for your data. Taking even just a little bit of time to check over your data could prevent you from having to go back and make changes after you see something off in your chart. So, whatever errors you have there will also appear in your chart. Remember, the charts you build within Excel are going to pull directly from your data set. Get your data readyīefore she dives right in with creating her chart, Lucy should take some time to scroll through her data and fix any errors that she spots-whether it’s a digit that looks off, a month spelled incorrectly, or something else. ![]() How to build an Excel chart: A step-by-step Excel chart tutorial 1. But, she really wants to make an impact-so, she’s going to use an Excel chart to display the subscriber growth she’s worked so hard for. Sure, the numbers themselves show impressive growth, and she could simply spit out those digits during her presentation. She really wants to knock the presentation out of the park-because, when you boil it down, this information proves that she’s doing her job well.Ĭurrently, she has the total number of email subscribers for each month of 2017 in a simple Excel spreadsheet that looks like this: She has to deliver a presentation to her organization’s leadership team, where she’ll highlight the growth of email subscribers over the past 12 months. She works on the marketing team at her company and is primarily responsible for all of the email marketing campaigns. Growth in email subscribers: An Excel charts case study
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