Colorizing Charts

If you have a pie chart with a large number of sections, getting unique colors for each section might be a problem. Or, perhaps your printer doesn't print colors exactly as they are on your screen so some colors which appear quite distinct on the screen will print out nearly the same on paper.

Don't despair—you can change the color of any individual section of a pie chart, or any other type of chart for that matter. For pie charts, follow these steps if you are using Excel 2007:

1. Click on the "pie" so that it is surrounded by handles (little squares).
2. Click again on the section you want to change. The handles will now surround only that section.
3. Right-click on the section. Excel displays a Context menu.
4. Choose the Format Data Point option from the Context menu. Excel displays the Format Data Point dialog box.
5. Click Fill at the left side of the dialog box. (See Figure 1.)



Figure 1. The Fill options of the Format Data Point dialog box.

6. Click the Solid Fill radio button. (Feel free to experiment with the other radio buttons, if you prefer.)
7. Use the Color drop-down list to select the color you want to use for the chart section.
8. Click on OK. Excel updates your chart.

If you are using an older version of Excel the steps are slightly different:

1. Click on the "pie" so that it is surrounded by handles (little squares).
2. Click again on the section you want to change. The handles will now surround only that section.
3. Right-click on the section. Excel displays a Context menu.
4. Choose the Format Data Point option from the Context menu. Excel displays the Format Data Point dialog box, with the Patterns tab selected. (See Figure 2.)



Figure 2. The Format Data Point dialog box.

5. In the Area portion of the dialog box, select the color you want to use for the chart section.
6. Click on OK. Excel updates your chart.

These steps can be easily adapted to any type of chart. The only difference is that you select the chart object (bar, point, what have you) in the first two steps instead of the pie section.

When I make a chart, I also like to apply this same process to chart titles. I like them to be the same color as the information in the chart to which they apply. This makes identification even clearer.