Microsoft Office

Getting Started Making Charts 19
In addition, all charts have a chart area (the entire background area of the chart) and a plot area. The plot area
shows the actual chart, and in this example, the plot area has a different background color.
Charts can have additional parts or fewer parts, depending on the chart type. For example, a pie chart has
slices and no axes. A 3-D chart may have walls and a floor. You can also add many other types of items to a
chart. For example, you can add a trend line or display error bars. In other words, after you create a chart, you
have a great deal of flexibility in customizing the chart.
Creating a Chart
Creating a chart is fairly simple:
TIP
1. Make sure that your data is appropriate for a chart.
2. Select the range that contains your data.
3. Select a chart type by clicking a chart icon in the Insert ➪ Charts. These icons display dropdown
lists that display subtypes.
4. (Optional) Use the commands in the Chart Tools context menu to change the look or layout
of the chart or add or delete chart elements.
You can create a chart with a single keystroke. Select the range to be used in the chart and
press F11. Excel inserts a new chart sheet and displays the chart of the selected data using the
default chart type.
Hands On: Creating and Customizing a Chart
This section contains a step-by-step example of creating a chart and applying some customizations. If
you’ve never created a chart, this is a good opportunity to get a feel for how it works.
Figure 19.3 shows a worksheet with a range of data. This data is customer survey results by month,
broken down by customers in three age groups. In this case, the data resides in a table (created by choosing
Insert ➪ Tables ➪ Table), but that’s not a requirement to create a chart.
ON the CD-ROM
This workbook, named hands-on example.xlsx, is available on the companion CD-ROM.
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