Create Appealing Charts In Excel 2007
Creating a professional looking chart for Excel presentations is extremely easy in Excel 2007. Making charts is a more interesting way to present data than just going through the rows and columns on a spreadsheet.
First highlight the data you want to chart on your Excel spreadsheet.
Now that we have the correct data selected we need to click Insert on The Ribbon. Now select Charts and decide what type of chart you want to represent the data. I usually experiment at this point because you can always undo a certain selection.
In this example I used the Exploding Pie Chart. After you make your selection you will get a nice preview of how it looks. Now we can take this chart and move it anywhere on the Excel document.
Next we want to tweak it a bit more by going to the Design tab in The Ribbon and clicking on Quick Layout. Here we can choose from different types of layouts for the chart. Again here you can experiment until you get the right fit.
This is the layout I ended up with. Now lets individualize the chart title by right clicking "Chart Title" and selecting Edit Text.
That is all there is to it! As you can see we have a nice looking chart to help everyone at the meeting understand the data and statistic easier. Later this week I will go over adding details to the chart.
**Also, for you Keyboard Ninja's a quicker way to execute this process is to highlight the data on your spreadsheet and hit the F11 key. This will bring up a separate "Chart Tab" where you can then manipulate the appearance and add details.
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If by "appealing" you mean Excel's defaults, then OK, but rarely are these what people want to see. They are much to cluttered.
check out http://charts.jorgecamoes.com/ for better examples.
Jayson, thanks for the reference. Now I have to build a chart gallery…
If there is a really unprofessional chart it must be a 3D, exploded pie chart. I know graphic designers like them, but a large majority of graphic designers don't really care about the data, only about their designs. One of the best exceptions is of course the NTY.
what a great link. Thanks Jayson. Here is another link that I think is cool:
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2007/08/02/data-visualization-modern-approaches/
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This version of excel is missing some charts though. I used to use one line graph that had different data on two vertical axes. Do you know how I can retrieve that chart? Right now I'm putting one chart over another and it's cumbersome, especially when you add additional data.
Yup, I love excel charts (though I use other types of Chart Libraries for creating complex charts), but when you need something which is quick and dirty (pretty), then nothing beats excel:
Here are some quick charts I made in Excel for blog visitor stats: http://blog.gadodia.net/the-state-of-things-firefox-rules/
Very nice. Thanks Mysticgeek.