Please download IntroExcel-Part2-SampleWorkbook.xlsx to follow along with workshop activities.

Throughout this workshop Click refers to a Left Click with your mouse

Create Charts and Graphs

Not only can Excel help you organize data and information, it can also help you create charts and graphs to visually share your data.

Today, we will create a Bar Chart that compares each employee’s sales in Q1 and Q2 and describe the data in more detail.

Create a bar chart

First, let’s navigate to Sheet1 in our workbook.

• Highlight all of our data
  • Option 1: Click Cell A1, hold down the Shift key on your keyboard, and click Cell F23
  • Option 2: Click Cell A1 and drag to highlight all data OR
  • Option 3: Hit Ctrl + A your keyboard (Cmd + A for Mac users)

We can now work on creating our chart.

• Navigate to the Insert tab and the Charts section
• Click the picture of the Bar Chart
• Click 2-D Clustered Column (option 1)

Right away, we see that this chart is a mess and the visualization is confusing – but we can fix it!

Edit the data in a bar chart

Since we only want to compare sales in Q1 and Q2, we aren’t interested in Total Sales or Hire Date.

To remove Total Sales and Hire Date from our chart:

• Click the chart
• Click the Funnel Icon (on a Mac, right click the chart and click Select Data)
• Under Series, click the check-mark next to Total Sales and Hire Date to uncheck the boxes (on a Mac, under Series click to highlight Total Sales, then click Remove and follow the same steps for Hire Date)
• Click Apply (on a Mac, click OK)

Our chart is looking much better - but including the state names in our chart makes it difficult to read.

To remove State names from our chart:

• Click the chart
• Click the Funnel Icon (on a Mac, right click the chart and click Select Data)
• Click Names (on a Mac, navigate to the Category (X) axis labels box)
• Under Categories, select the option for Column B (on a Mac, change the cell range to remove any reference to state names, for example: =Sheet1!$B$2:$B$23)
• Click Apply (on a Mac, click OK)

After these two small changes, our chart looks so much better!

Describe the data

Another important part of creating visualizations is to add text that describes the data.

Add a chart title

• Click the chart
• Navigate to the Design tab and the Chart Layouts section
• Click Add Chart Element
• Hover over Chart Title and click Above Chart

We now have a text box that we can use to add a chart title.

To edit the text:

• Click the chart
• Click the Chart Title text box
• Type a title that describes the data
  • Maybe something like Employee Sales by Quarter

Position the chart legend

• Click the chart
• Navigate to the Design tab and the Chart Layouts section
• Click Add Chart Element
• Hover over Legend
• Click Right

Our legend is now positioned to the right of our bar chart.

Add a title to the horizontal axis (x-axis)

• Click the chart
• Navigate to the Design tab and the Chart Layouts section
• Click Add Chart Element
• Hover over Axis Titles
• Click Primary Horizontal

We now have a text box that we can use to describe this axis.

To edit the text:

• Click the chart
• Click the Axis Title text box
• Type a word or phrase that describes this axis
  • Maybe something like Employee Names

You can use the same steps to add a title to the Primary Vertical axis.

More Help

To learn more about charts and graphs, open Excel and navigate to the Insert tab and the Charts section.

You can also visit Microsoft’s Available Chart Types website.