One of Excel’s most powerful (fun, interesting, useful, you get the idea) is its ability to make charts.

Charts help you to present your information in a visually interesting way. Helping you to better make your point.

Excel helps you to make charts by providing the Chart Wizard.

This Wizard will guide you through creating many standard formats of charts.

The Wizard works by asking you a number of questions and using your answers to draw a chart.

Excel provides two ways of entering charts, the Embedded chart and the Chart sheet.

Embedded charts are inserted into an existing worksheet page.

Chart sheets are charts that are placed on separate sheets of a workbook, apart from any worksheet data.

Embedded charts work best when you need to display or print the chart along with worksheet data.

Chart sheets work best when all you want to show is the chart.

Which ever you use, they both will be linked to the data in the Worksheet.

When that data is updated, so is your chart.

First, Select the data that you want to chart.

Second, click on the Chart Wizard button on the Standard toolbar.

Choose a desired chart type, and follow the instructions to create your chart.

First, select the data that you want to chart, be sure to include any labels.

Second, choose Insert>>Chart, then click on the Next button and follow the directions.

In the last Chart Wizard dialog box, choose As New Sheet to place the chart on a separate worksheet.

Before you explore all the different ways of displaying your data, it is helpful to understand the basic terminology of charts.

Excel uses the object-oriented nature of Windows.

What this means is that each element of a chart is its own object.

To edit an element, normally all you will need to do is to right click on it and choose the option you wish.

In the 95 version, you normally must first double click the chart.

The chart toolbar pops up when you are working with charts. If it does not, go to view and toolbars and turn it on.

This provides an easy shortcut to changing many of the elements of your chart.

The parts of the Excel 97 Toolbar include the following:

Chart Objects—Lets you select any part of the chart by choosing it from the list box.

Format Chart Area—Displays the Format Chart Area dialog box.

Chart Type—Selects a chart type.

Legend—Adds or removes the legend from the chart.

Data Table—Adds a data table to the chart.

By Row—Arranges the series data by row.

By Column—Arranges the series data by column.

Titles are typically used with charts to help describe the purpose of the chart or to clarify the purpose of the various chart axes.

To add a title select the chart and choose Insert>>Chart>>Options and click the titles tab.

You can add text to the chart that is not attached to a specific axis by displaying the drawing toolbar and using the text Box button.

Excel allows you to change the appearance of the chart axes in a variety of ways.

To alter the appearance of an axes right-click on the axis and choose Format Axis from the shortcut menu.

The box that pops-up has five tabs which allow you to change various part of the chart.

If a chart doesn’t have a legend you can add one by choosing Chart>>Chart Options and clicking on the Legend tab.

After you add a legend you can alter its appearance by double-clicking on the legend.

To add gridlines to your chart, select the chart to make it active and choose Chart>>Chart Options and click on the Gridlines tab.

From the Gridlines dialog box you can choose between minor and major gridlines.

You can add a lot to the appearance of a chart by customizing the default settings.

You can change the background colors, the borders, the fonts—almost anything!

Just select the chart and choose Format Chart Area.

A dialog box will appear that allows you to change all sorts of things.