MS Office 101

Fix It With A Click, Click

Last week (back on Tuesday, November 4) we discussed charting—often called graphing—data in MS Excel.

We covered the basics of using the Chart Wizard and by the end we were in a position to quickly create some pretty slick looking stuff from our raw data.

Sounded great!

Everyone's happy.

Or not...

What if you had gone completely through the charting process, had a beautiful graph and realized that you spelled a word wrong?

What now?

Do you have to start all over?

Oh, I hope not—there must be a quick and easy solution—somewhere...

Breathe easy, there is.

Mistakes in an Excel chart are often fixed with just a click, click.

Do you remember at the end of our discussion where I mentioned that the chart and the data are connected? (A change in the data will automatically change the chart.)

Well... this also works with the data labels you highlighted to create the chart. If there's a misspelled word you can correct it right in the worksheet and—just like magic—the chart is fixed too.

But, what about all the other titles you put into the graph?

Don't worry, they're also easy to fix.

Simply click twice on the title to be changed.

That's right—just click, click.

Well, actually, it's click, wait a second, and click again.

You will get a cursor in the text so you can make the necessary changes.

When you finish simply click somewhere else in the graph.

Mistake all gone!

PS: did you click twice too fast (in other words—you actually did a double click)? What did you get—a window with a few tabs and a bunch of options you can change—right? Want to know what all that's about?

Yes?

Good, then take a look at today's tip to find the scoop on customizing your MS Excel charts.

Office Tip of the Day

MS Excel Charts Done Your Way

OK, so you've made an absolutely beautiful Excel chart but you're seeing a few things that you'd like to change.

Maybe you'd prefer a different font for the text.

Maybe you need a smaller font on some of the labeling so Excel will display all the category names.

Maybe you have money amounts graphed and all the ".00" on the end are just too much. I bet you'd just love to find a way to format the numbers to have zero decimal places!

Or, what about some angled text—that usually looks great and will help Excel to display all of the category names in a "space crunch".

And what about the default colors? Did you have something else in mind?

Maybe change this

into this?

For all those things and more, you can find your solution in the double-click.

Once you have your chart completed editing is a snap.

Simply move the mouse pointer to the area to be changed and double-click.

A window will open with tabs for whatever options you have regarding that item.

You'll need to take a moment and "flip" through the tabs to find out what's available for each item. (You'll find that some things have more options than others.)

When you're done making changes simply click OK.

Instantly you're returned to the chart with the changes complete.

Don't like your changes?

Never fear—the Undo button will change them back.

If changing colors is your thing, then you might be interested in this little tidbit.

When you click on the bars, pie wedges or points you may notice that you get all the pieces highlighted.

If you double click you get all pieces highlighted and the window to make changes (including color) opens.

Keep in mind here, they are all changed the same since they were all selected when you entered the window. (Not too great for pie graphs—different colors is a common format for those.)

So... is there a way to get just one bar, pie wedge or point?

Yes—of course.

This is another one of those "click, wait a second, and click again" scenarios.

If you do that you'll find that you have just one piece selected. Double click on that one piece (or one of the others) to make changes to each piece separately.

Another little item I've run into—it sometimes seems that I just can't get Excel to select the part of the chart I need to change. It thinks I'm trying to select one thing when I really need another.

In situations like this I find that if I click completely outside the chart and then try again it works instantly.

Well... I could probably go on with the changing of the charts all day. There's so many things that can be changed—it's really a matter of you exploring.

Want to change a chart element?

Click it to fix it.

~ April