Creating and Customizing Charts in Excel
Charts are the bread and butter of data visualization. Data Visualization helps us better understand raw data. Data that may be otherwise very tedious to look at.
Whether it’s trying to show a employer patterns and trends in a more digestible manner or simply you just love playing with charts, excels charts have a use case for almost anyone. Lets get started in taking our next step in becoming more proficient with excel.
Getting Started with Charts in Excel
Inserting Charts
Steps to Insert a Chart: To insert , first select the data that you will be using. Then go to the insert tab and navigate to the charts section. In here we can choose between many different kinds of charts. For now lets choose a 2D bar chart and their you go!
Customizing Charts
Chart Design Tools: Once the chart is inserted the chart design tab appears. Here we can use the charts layouts and styles to customize the appearance.
Data Management: In the chart design tab their is a data section. Here we can switch the column and rows to change how the data is categorized. You can also remove unnecessary data by selecting data and unchecking what you don’t want and vice versa of course.
Chart Title and Position: when you first insert a chart the title might not be what you want it to be, so lets change that. We can click on the title and proceed to edit it. If you also wanted to move a chart to another sheet just to isolate your visualizations you can just simply copy and paste the chart. One more thing, if you choose the wrong chart no worries you can simply go to chart design tab and click “change chart type”.
Cleaning and Enhancing Charts
Simplifying Data: As mentioned before we can simply uncheck values using the data section to make the chart cleaner. This can be useful when we included extra columns like total sales for example that we don’t need when just comparing categories.
Customizing Colors: We can also change the colors by going to the chart design section again. Colors are important to avoid confusion. Imagine if all different categories of lets say food had the same color. We Would have to read the text underneath to make out which is which constantly.
Adding Data Labels and Legends: Adding Data labels will help us when it comes to clarity. We can change where the legend appears. To do that click on the plus symbol and top right corner of the chart. Then go to legend and click the arrow and choose your desired position.
Column Charts and Bar Charts
Understanding Column and Bar Charts
Difference Between Column and Bar Charts: Column charts display data vertically while bar charts display data horizontally. Typically you want to use bar charts when the data you have is very long and the text itself is also very long. This will help with viewing , which is the whole point of visualizing data effectively.
Creating and Customizing Column and Bar Charts
Inserting a Chart: Go to insert just like before and choose 2D chart. However if you interested in adding a chart much faster all you have to do is click on your data and then type ‘Alt + F1’ for quick chart creation.
Switching Chart Types: To change your chart type go to Chart Design> Change chart type. Yes its that simple!
Adjusting Chart Elements: Instead of clicking the ‘+’ at the top right corner that I spoke about earlier. You can also go to Chart Design > Add Chart element. Here you will be giving the same options to change you legend position and axis. If your feeling lazy or wants some inspiration you can also utilize the quick layouts for predefined designs for your chart.
Dynamic Titles: Instead of changing your title directly by clicking on it. If you have the title already on the spreadsheet. You can click on the title in the chart then go to the formula bar and type ‘=cell’. Cell will the cell where your title is located then press enter. Now if you ever change your title on the cell it will be automatically reflected on the chart.
Comparative Charts: We can also have column charts that include multiple bars for each data type like year. Its called a clustered bar or column. This allows us to compare a group of data with another group of data like men’s top 3 outdoor activities and women’s top 3 ranked and see how the differ more clearly.
Adjusting Bar Gaps: We can double click on the bar itself and able to adjust the gap of the bars between each other or how much space the bar width itself takes. This can be particularly useful when dealing with lots of data and we want to create a good bin interval.
Stacked Columns: We can take comparing two groups of data to the next level from clustered column charts to stacked columns. By stacking it we can get a clearer picture of the amount a data point differs from another like sales this year vs sales last year in total.
Pie Charts
Using Pie Charts
Purpose of Pie Charts: If you want to show the share of distribution that a data takes up compared to other categories a pie chart is good way to do just that.
Creating Pie Charts: To create one it’s similar to creating a column chart. First select your data , then head over to insert and head over to charts and then select 2D pie chart.
Customizing Pie Charts: You can change colors and titles just like other charts the same exact way and also you can add data labels to fill in pie charts that look empty and need more clarity. Pie charts are best used with minimal amounts of categories/data.
Line Graphs
Using Line Graphs
Purpose of Line Graphs: You mainly want to use line graphs to show the trend of data over a certain amount of time.
Creating Line Graphs: To create one it’s similar to creating a column chart. First select your data , then head over to insert and head over to charts and then select 2D line chart.
Customizing Line Graphs: You can change colors and titles just like other charts the same exact way and also you can add data labels and more!
Overall, if you haven't realized this yet. Data visualization serves the purpose of conveying raw data into a more digestible and clear way to your stakeholders. We can use different kinds of charts to tell different kinds of stories with the same exact dataset.
Whether your looking to see your best yearly sales or how a product has been doing over time , rest asure that their is a chart for that. In the next article we will be looking at more formulas to help us search and format data. Until next time, good morning, good evening and good night!
