PowerPoint charts
just like illustrations in a book are
designed to help you illustrate your
point things like color layout and even
the chart type can all be changed to
better fit the information you're trying
to convey take this account of our
bookstore sales figures right now the
columns are grouped by genre but I'm
more interested in taking a look at
trends over time which means grouping
the data by year there's an easy way to
change that just make sure your chart is
selected then from the design tab click
the Edit data command this opens an
Excel worksheet now click back to
PowerPoint and choose switch column or
row see how that rearrange the data
basically the years in the genres have
switched places you can always
experiment with this to see which option
is going to work best if you want to try
a different chart all together you can
click Change chart type and pick
something else from the dialog box I
think I will go with a line chart this
time line charts work well for data like
this for example we can see right away
that classics had an unusually good year
in 2007 and also that mysteries are
starting to catch up to romance novels
the lines would be easier to see though
if they were thicker let's see if we can
change that by selecting a different
chart style just click the arrow here to
open the full menu that's much better
the last thing I'd like to change is the
chart layout itself we have lots of
layouts to choose from not all of them
will work for the data you're trying to
present just keep going until you find
the one you like how does that look as
you can see customizing your chart is
easy and with everything available on
the design tab you can achieve exactly
the look and feel you want
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