Now I mentioned several videos ago way back when we're talking about the Excel interface we were talking
it talking about the ribbon the standard ribbon you got home Insert Page Layout and so on but the ribbon
is very dynamic.
For example if I select my charts just cooking some place empty down there I've now got two new tabs
at the top of my street.
Design and format and I think I double clicked on there so it gave me this format chart area and it
closed that we don't need that right now.
So just like in the chart.
Two new tabs from the two new tabs.
This is my chart tools ribbon.
I've got some design options that I can get into.
I've got some formatting options.
This is where you'll find all of the features that deal with your chart.
Now I want to show off a couple of them here.
Couple of the features.
And we'll talk about a few others as we continue through this discussion of charts.
Now first off I've got a chart title and the range.
All it says is chart title that's not very descriptive.
This should say monthly budget.
So I'm just going to click where it says chart title I'll go into there highlight that text and I'm
just going to call this monthly budgets.
Now the chart title was given to me by default the chart title itself is actually a chart option.
It's something you could turn on and off and if with my chart selected I'll go back to the Design tab
.
And inside here I do have some options to change the way my chart looks to change the way my title looks
as well as other operations.
But talking about just the title all by itself with the chart selected specific to 2013 I can go to
the little plus sign and site here I'll find all sorts of elements of the chart.
One of them is chart title.
I go under there and I can tell it where to show up whether it's above the chart or centered over the
top of the chart or I can get into some additional options.
Now for me I like it above the charts I'm going to leave it as is.
For those of you that are watching this that are still on 2010 or earlier you don't get the little plus
sign what you get is an additional tab up here at the top of the screen call out if you cook on the
Layout tab you'll find something very similar to the plus sign you'll see chart elements with all the
options chart titled data X-ers data chart and so on.
You'll find it all right there.
So save little set up just found on the Layout tab rather than the plus sign.
Now something else you can do whether it's on the Layout tab or in the plus sign deals with the legend
.
I like the ledge and I want to keep it out there but I don't like it at the bottom.
I want to put it at the top.
Typically when I read a chart it's kind of top to bottom.
So I want to start at the top see the legend and then see the data.
Something small but I just like the flow better this way.
So in the plus side or the Layout tab will find the legend.
I mean to go a little arrow here and I'm going to tell it to put it at the top.
Now I've got my legend there at the top of my chart.
These are simple little changes whether it's your title or the legend or some other feature.
But we're trying to manipulate the chart to make it more accessible.
It's a visual element and the quicker the users can glance at the chart and recognize the data and make
those business intelligent decisions based on what we're presenting the better off we're going to be
.
So think about how you want to leave or chart out what options do we want.
There's a whole slew of stuff that you can mess around with here.
I could spend an hour just talking about charts and all the features that are involved instead of a
chart.
But let's talk about just one more thing here and this is something that I want to point out more because
I want to show you that you know what.
Even though you have all these features you want to be careful about how much you add to the chart because
once again we don't want to make it too cluttered.
We still want to make it accessible and readable.
Inside the plus side or the Layout tab whichever version you're on.
I'm going to find data labels go a little plus or go to a little arrow here and I'm going to tell them
to go into the outside.
And so now I've got data labels that show up on my cluster column chart and I like that.
It might be a little bit too much out there.
We're here to discuss how we can maybe perhaps manipulate this to make the chart larger so it's not
as cluttered in there but once again there's a lot of options you can add through the ribbon or through
a little plus side based on whatever option or whatever version of Excel you have there.
So try this out.
Poke around see what different options you have here.
Pokhran On the plus side if you're into dozens 13 or 2000 16 if you're on 2010 hop up to the Layout
tab and you'll find some options there.
So try manipulate your chart.
Adding some of these chart elements