Creating Charts

Tips, Tricks, and Answers

The following articles are available for the 'Creating Charts' topic. Click the article's title (shown in bold) to see the associated article.

Automatically Creating Charts for Individual Rows in a Data Table
Got a huge amount of data in a data table, but you only want to select a single record from the table to create a chart? This tip presents three ways you can access just the information you want and create a dynamic chart based on that information.

Controlling the Plotting of Empty Cells
When creating a chart from information that contains empty cells, you can direct Excel how it should proceed. This tip explains the process.

Easily Changing Chart Data Ranges
Many times you use the same chart format to graph a subset of information from a full data table. This tip presents a detailed tutorial on how to make your charts more dynamic and easier to use.

Graphically Charting Geographic Data
Excel can do all sorts of charts, but its ability to create geographic charts depends on the version of Excel you are using. This tip discusses the options available and how you can get the type of geographic chart you need.

Make that Chart Quickly!
Want to create a chart in the quickest way possible? This tip introduces a very simple shortcut key that allows you to create a chart with a single keypress.

Moving Groups of Data Labels at One Time
Having problems working with data labels in your charts? That's not unusual; here's an idea of an add-in that could help you manage those labels better.

Multiple Data Points in a Chart Column
Excel provides lots of ways you can create charts. This tip provides some pointers on how you can combine stacked column charts and clustered column charts in ways you may not have been aware of.

Numeric Value and Percentage Value in a Graph Column
Do you want to include two data labels with your chart? Exactly how you can achieve this feat isn't intuitive in Excel, but once you learn the trick you'll be able to display the labels just the way you want.

Specifying Chart Sizes
If you need a number of charts in your workbook to all be the same size, it can be a bother to manually change each of them. Here's a way you can make quick work of sizing all those charts.

Specifying the Size of Chart Objects
Create a new chart object in an existing worksheet, and Excel automatically makes the object 25% of whatever the screen size is. If you want a different size (without manually resizing), you are out of luck unless you use a macro to create the chart object. This tip explains how you can do this.