Charts and diagrams are tools you can use to visually represent the data in a worksheet. You can use them to show trends, averages, high and low points, and more. Not only do they make your worksheets more visually appealing, they also serve a definite function. They make it easier for your intended audience to sort out and understand the information you are presenting to them. This is especially true when dealing with data.

There are many different kinds of charts available in MS Excel--pie charts, bar charts, line charts, even organizational charts. What's more, MS Excel provides you with a handy tool to help you create them: The Chart Wizard.

To access the chart wizard, click the chart button in the standard toolbar, or click Insert > Chart.

The chart wizard has four steps. In the first step, you will choose the type of chart you'd like use. When you select a chart type from the list on the left and a chart sub-type, an explanation for it will appear in the box at the bottom right of the dialog box.

Note: To create an organizational chart, see Diagrams and Organization Charts later on in this article.

To see an example of how the chart might look in your workbook, click the Press and Hold to View Sample button:

Click Next to continue.

The second step is to select the data range.

The data range refers to the number of cells you'd like to use. For instance, in the above example "=Sheet1!$A$7:$D$10" refers to cells A7 through D10 on worksheet one. This is called a reference. For now, it may be easier to select the data range by dragging your mouse over it. To do that, click the Data Range button next to the text box.

The chart wizard will disappear and you'll see another box that looks like this:

But don't worry, you will not have to restart the chart wizard. This window is simply asking you to define the data range, and you can do it easily by clicking on a cell, holding the mouse button, and dragging it over all of the cells you'd like to add. MS Excel automatically enters the selected cell coordinates into the data range window. When you are finished, you can either click the button on the right or push Enter.

You can also enter the range by selecting the Series tab in the chart wizard.

The upper part of the window shows an approximation of what your graph will look like. As you can see in the example above, Excel automatically inserts the series names into the legend and color-codes them. We'll show you how to change this color and other aspects of your chart in a minute. Right now, you can click on a series and see what data range it represents in the "Name" and "Values" windows. To get see the actual range in your worksheet, click the data range button . Click Next to continue.

You can type in a title, add gridlines, change the orientation of the legend, and add a data table as in the example below.

 

In step 4, the final step, choose whether to place the chart into your workbook as a new worksheet or as an object. When you choose to place the chart as worksheet, the new worksheet is created automatically and called "Chart":

Click Finish to create the chart.

Here is how your chart will look inserted into your worksheet:

Modifying and Moving a Chart

There are a number of ways to modify a chart after it's made. You can relaunch the chart wizard, use the associated toolbar, or right click on it and select an option from the menu.

To relaunch the wizard, simply select a chart and click the chart wizard button. Then navigate through each step as necessary and click Finish.

Using the toolbar

Any time you insert an object into MS Excel, its associated toolbar opens automatically. If you inserted a chart and the toolbar did not open click View > Toolbars > Chart.

The first thing you'll notice are the words "Chart Area" in the text box. This is the selected element of the chart. Click the arrows on the right side of the text box to see all the available options.

You can also select an element inside a chart by clicking on it. For instance, in the following example, we have selected Series "Gas".

The squares in the blue bars on our diagram tell us which item we selected. Each of these bars represents a figure in the "Gas" row of our worksheet.

The format button to the right of the text box allows you to format each selected element. Since we selected Series "Gas", the format function will allow us to edit every aspect of that element. We can change the color of the bar that represents it, its border, its label, and more. You can also access the format function by selecting an element and right clicking on it, then select "Format Data Series…" It says ‘Data Series' in this case because that is the element we selected. If we had selected the chart area, it would say "Format Chart Area…"

The next button over is the chart type button . The picture on the Chart Type button changes to represent whatever chart type was selected. If a pie chart was selected, the button would look like this: . Click the arrow to see what types of charts are available.

Click an option to select it. As we said before, you can also relaunch the chart wizard to change the chart type. Or right click, and select Chart Type.

Next is the Legend button. It looks like this: . Use it to toggle the legend on and off in a selected chart. Likewise, the data table button toggles the data table on and off. The example below shows what the chart looks like with the data table and legend turned on.