Goodwill Community Foundation creating
opportunities for a better life when
working with numerical data and Excel
sometimes a chart is just what you need
to show the meaning behind the numbers
in this video we're going to take a look
at some of the different types of charts
and also some ways that you can
customize them to best represent your
data column charts are good all-around
charts they work with many different
types of data whereas line charts are
best for showing trends over time pie
charts are unique because they let you
see your data and proportion instead of
on a graph we also have the bar chart
which is basically just a column chart
turned on its side and finally area
charts which are similar to line charts
except the areas under the lines are
filled in
in this example I have a table of sales
figures for a bookstore they're
organized by genre and month but it's
hard to see any trends without looking
at the numbers one by one a chart would
make things much easier to create a
chart select your data including any
headers that you want to use then go to
the insert tab and look to the commands
in the charts group for this data I
think I'll go with something in the
column category this one looks nice and
simple now that is a lot clearer I can
see that romance has the strongest sales
with an all-time high in February how do
I know this column is from February well
below the chart there's a type of key
called a legend and this tells us what
each color represents right now the
columns are grouped by genre but you
might prefer to see them grouped by
month instead there's an easy way to
make this change just make sure the
chart is selected then click switch
row/column
on the design tab see how the chart has
been rearranged basically it's the same
data but the months and genres have
switched places you can always
experiment with this to see which option
is going to work best for your data if
you want to try a different chart
altogether click the change chart type
command on the far right of the tab then
pick something else from the dialog box
I think I'll go with a line chart this
time
line charts work well for data like this
for example we can see right away that
mystery novels are starting to catch up
with romance but sci-fi and fantasy
sales have stayed consistently low if
you want you can change the chart style
to give your chart a different look and
feel
as you can see you have several
different options to choose from
you can also change the chart layout
itself just go to the quick layout
command and make a selection from the
menu not all of these options will work
well for the data in your chart just
keep going until you find something you
like
let's go with something a little bit
like this you can make further
adjustments using the add chart element
command or the chart elements shortcut
just look for the button with the plus
sign here you can add or remove elements
from your chart depending on your
preferences
or you can click the arrow to the right
to access even more options to edit one
of your chart elements like the chart
title in this example all you have to do
is select the placeholder then replace
the text
finally whenever you insert a chart
here's on the same sheet as the source
data by default if you want you can move
it to a different worksheet by following
these steps first make sure your chart
is selected then click the move chart
command next select the sheet where you
want the chart to go in this example
we'll choose new sheet when you're ready
click OK
and now the chart appears in whatever
location you chose charts are a great
tool for presenting numerical data and
also enhancing your worksheets in Excel
with so many options to choose from
you can achieve exactly the result you
want