Friday, May 12, 2006

Graphing in Excel
One of the last pieces of Excel I taught this semester was graphing. This is the ability to take ranges of cells and turn them into graphical representations using a variety of chart types. The two most used seem to be the column chart and the pie chart. The line graph might be third, especially when graphing progress over time.

The Chart Wizard is what the textbook uses, and what I concentrate on as well. However, for a quick chart there is even an easier way. Select the items to be charted, then press F11. It could not be simpler. A new worksheet named Chart1 is created containing a column chart of the selected data.

Want to alter the automatic results? Click the chart and you will notice a menu bar entry named Chart where you have options to change any of the defaulted items including the chart type.