Charts let you represent your data
graphically which helps your audience
see the meaning behind the numbers we're
going to look at some of the different
types of charts and also some of the
ways you can customize them to best
represent your data in this example I
have a table of sales statistics for a
bookstore and they're categorized by
genre and by year but it's hard to
really see any trends without looking at
all of the numbers one by one a chart
will make this much easier to create a
chart select your data and then go to
the insert tab
in the charts group you'll see all of
the different categories and each one
has its own advantages so let's take a
look at a few of the more common ones
column charts are good all-around charts
and they work with many different types
of data line charts are best for showing
trends over time pie charts let you
easily compare the proportions of
different items bar charts are basically
just column charts except they use
horizontal bars and area charts are like
line charts except the areas under the
lines are filled in and there are also
some other types that are a bit more
specialized
I think I'll start with a column each
category has a number of different
variations
I think the 3d clustered column looks
good
okay this is a lot clearer I can see
that the romance books had the strongest
sales and they were really strong in
2007 now how do I know this column is
2007 well over on the right there is a
type of key called a legend and this
tells you what each color represents
right now the columns are grouped by
genre but you might prefer them to be
grouped by year instead and there's an
easy way to do this make sure the chart
is selected and then from the design tab
click the switch row / column command
and it will rearrange the chart so the
data is grouped by year
so basically the years and the genres
have switched places and you can just
experiment see which of these options
works better with your data
if you decide you'd like to try a
different chart type just click the
change chart type command
and I think I'll try a line chart
I think this kind of chart works really
well for this data for example you can
instantly see that Classics had an
unusually good year in 2007
and also that mysteries are starting to
catch up to romance novels
there are just a few more things that I
want to do to customize it it's a good
idea to have a title for the chart as
well as a label for each axis you can
add these by picking a layout that
includes them and these are found in the
charts layout group
I'll try this one
once you've found one you like you can
just change the placeholder text to
whatever you want
you can also choose a chart style
I like the colors that I have but I
think I'll go with the thicker line and
darker background
finally I'd like to move the chart to
its own sheet so I'll just click move
chart
and then select new sheet
and I'll call it book sales chart
and now it has its own sheet
so whenever you're creating a
spreadsheet that has a lot of numbers
consider using a chart to make it easier
for your audience to view and interpret
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