Building Column Charts

Quick reference

• 00:04 We're now gonna focus on charting in Excel.
• 00:07 One of the things that we always want to keep in mind as we're developing charts
• 00:11 is that every chart should tell a story as quickly and effectively as possible.
• 00:16 Every extra chart element that's on the chart creates noise and
• 00:20 gets in the way of the story.
• 00:21 And it is therefore a best practice to remove as much excess ink or noise as we can so
• 00:26 the reader can actually look at the chart, get in,
• 00:29 get the information that they need, and get out as quickly as possible.
• 00:33 We're gonna start by charting Old MacDonald's sales here.
• 00:36 We're gonna use a column chart and
• 00:37 then customize it to make it look as good as we possibly can.
• 00:41 To start with, we'll select our data, and then we'll go to the insert tab.
• 00:46 And we're gonna go click on Recommended Charts.
• 00:49 You'll notice that right away, the recommended chart is a clustered column
• 00:53 chart for this data, so that's nice and easy.
• 00:56 Let's go select that and say OK.
• 00:58 And it'll build us a chart that's not too bad.
• 01:01 But we can make some differences to this, make this look a little bit better here.
• 01:06 The first thing I'm gonna do is,
• 01:07 I'm gonna right-click on one of the data series here.
• 01:10 And I'm gonna say Add Data Labels, and we'll add data labels to it, there we go.
• 01:16 With the data labels in place, I really don't need the lines across here or
• 01:21 the vertical axis that shows these numbers.
• 01:24 So I can select these and say Delete.
• 01:27 And I can select the lines here and also say Delete.
• 01:30 So that removes some of the noise and
• 01:32 actually makes this look a little bit cleaner.
• 01:35 Now, in addition to this I can go through and I can do some other things.
• 01:38 I could right-click on these series here and say Format Data Series.
• 01:44 And I could change the series overlap and gap widths to different values.
• 01:49 So maybe I'll set this gap width, I'll slide it down here and
• 01:52 get to somewhere round say 60% to make those numbers look a little bit bigger.
• 01:57 I may also want to change the position of these numbers.
• 02:00 And you'll notice when I select them,
• 02:02 that it comes up with a format data labels right off the bat.
• 02:07 I could click on this little charting thing on the side here.
• 02:11 And I could change my label position to Inside Base.
• 02:15 Now that's not bad, but they're kinda dark, it's hard to see here.
• 02:19 So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna go to the Home tab and
• 02:22 I'm gonna change my font to white and
• 02:26 set it to bold as well to make sure that these pop out a little bit more.
• 02:32 The final thing that I'm going to do with this particular chart is I'm
• 02:35 going to change the header on it.
• 02:37 I'm going to select where it says May, I'm going to type in =.
• 02:42 And notice that the header doesn't change, it doesn't say = here, but
• 02:45 it is showing in the formula bar.
• 02:47 If that's not the case you want to select outside the chart and try again.
• 02:51 But what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna click Number of Animals Sold.
• 02:54 I'm gonna say Enter and I now have a good title on my chart.
• 02:59 I can dismiss the task pane.
• 03:01 I can click in the worksheet cells and I now have a nice clean chart
• 03:05 that allows my users to very quickly get the idea that beef sales are the highest.
• 03:10 But still gives them the numbers to look at in order to try and
• 03:13 figure out exactly what they want.
• 03:15 So I've reduced as much ink as possible.
• 03:17 I've removed as many elements from the chart as I possibly could to let the user
• 03:22 just focus on getting the exact message they need as quickly as possible, so
• 03:26 they can jump out to do other work.

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