Functions and Charts in Microsoft Excel

Functions &
Charts in
Microsoft Excel

Objective
Among the most unique and exciting features of Microsoft Excel are its complex
functions. In this class, you will learn to construct functions in Excel 2002. We will
create a fictional payroll report to demonstrate how to use functions in Excel. You will
learn some basic functions, including addition and multiplication, as well as more
complicated “conditional” functions such as IF. During the class, we will also show you
simple techniques for changing a cell’s category, copying functions, and making sure your
functions work the way you want. To conclude the class, you will also receive a basic
overview of creating simple charts of your data. You will learn how to select the right
type of chart and customize them to be more attractive and useful.

Outline

Changing Cell Categories.....................................................................................2
Inserting a function.............................................................................................3
All about functions..............................................................................................4
Entering functions manually.................................................................................6
Copying functions................................................................................................6
Relative versus absolute references.......................................................................7
Conditional functions...........................................................................................8
Nested functions.................................................................................................9
Using text in functions.......................................................................................10
Intermission for some tidying.............................................................................11
Creating your chart...........................................................................................11
The Chart Wizard and selecting a chart type.........................................................12
Chart Options...................................................................................................13
Editing your chart..............................................................................................15
Different charts, different options........................................................................17
Further customization options.............................................................................18

Functions & Charts in Excel, p.1

Excel functions allow you to make complicated calculations quickly and easily. We are
going to see a bit of what functions can do by creating a fake payroll report for our
workplace. Please enter the data below into a blank Excel spreadsheet as displayed.
Adjust the font styles and sizes to your preference.

Hint: Are you finding that the employees' names are getting cut off because the column
is too thin? You can automatically adjust the size of a column by double-clicking
the right-most edge at the top of the column.

Changing Cell Categories
Before we begin analyzing our data, it would help to make it a little easier to read. For
instance, it would be nice if our “Pay Rate” column were actually in dollars and cents.
Fortunately, Excel saves us from typing in all those dollar signs by allowing us to change
what’s called the “cell category.” The cell category represents how Excel “thinks” about
the data that’s in a specific cell: whether it’s a date, a number, text, dollars & cents, etc.

1. Begin by highlighting the prices in the “Pay Rate” column.

2. Next, move your mouse cursor over
“Format” in the menu bar and click
the left mouse button. This will
open the format menu, shown to the
right.

3. Move your mouse over the “Cells”
option and left click. This will open
the “Format Cells” window shown
below.


This is the “Format Cells” dialog box, which allows
you change various aspects of a cell including the
font, borders, and appearance. It also allows us
to change the category of a cell, i.e., how Excel
displays and “reads” the data in the cell.

4. To continue changing our cell
category, select “Currency” from
the left-hand box and click OK.
This will automatically change all
of our highlighted cells to dollars
& cents, as on the right. Notice
that you can also have Excel
round to the nearest dollar, ten
dollars, etc.

Inserting a function
Now that we’re working in dollars & cents, we can insert our first function. Functions can
be as simple as adding a few cells together or as complex as performing statistical
analysis. We’re going to start off simple with the SUM function. SUM adds the contents
of cells together. This function will be useful for telling us how many hours have been
worked this pay period.

Hint: Remember, the letter in a cell reference (e.g. A1, F26, etc.) always refers to the
column, and the number refers to the row.

1. Begin by positioning your selection box in cell
D15, just to the left of the “Total:” entry.

2. Next, move your mouse cursor over “Insert”
in the menu bar and click the left mouse
button. This will open the Insert menu,
shown to the left.

3. Move your mouse over the “Function” option
and left click. This will open the “Insert
Function” window shown below.

The “Insert Function” box gives you access to all of the functions that Excel has to offer,
which is a rather extensive list. It divides them into categories, listed in the drop-down
menu just below the “Search for a function” box. Thus, if you only want functions related
to the date & time, you can select that category and the functions in that category will be
listed in the box below.


On the bottom of the window, Excel briefly
explains the highlighted function and
(somewhat cryptically) how to input it.

4. To continue entering our function, select
“All” from the category drop-down menu.
This lists all of the functions that Excel
has to offer. Scroll down to “SUM” in the
bottom box and click on it.

5. Click “OK.” This will close the “Insert
Function” window and open the box
shown below.

Here, Excel is asking us, in its
complicated way, what we’d like to
sum. Once again, Excel gives us
hints on what the function does and
how it works. At the bottom of the
“Function Arguments” window, you
will also get a preview of the result
of your function. You can move the
“Function Arguments” box out of the
way by clicking and holding your left
mouse button and dragging the box
somewhere more convenient.

6. Instead of adding numbers, as Excel's sample suggests, we’re actually
going to add a range of cells. Using your mouse, highlight cells D5 through
D15. Highlighting the cells will cause a dashed line to appear around them,
as shown at right.

7. Click “OK” on the function box. Excel has now just added together the
number hours worked for us!

Hint: Did that take too long? We’re learning the “long way” of inserting functions, but
you can also click the AutoSum icon to quickly insert a SUM function.

All about functions
Now that we've inserted a function, let's learn more about them. Begin by clicking on the
cell D15. When you look at this cell in the spreadsheet itself, you see a number (in the
example above, it's 579). However, what this cell actually contains is a function. You
can tell this because the value shown in the “Formula Bar,” just below the toolbars at the
top of your screen, is different.


This text is the function as Excel sees it. This particular function adds together the
values in cells D5 through D14. While each function in Excel is slightly different, they have many
similar elements. These elements are shown below.

Function Argument Data
= SUM (D5:D14)

The equal sign tells The argument tells Data (which could
Excel that you want Excel what you be cells or numbers)
to enter a want it to do (e.g. are what you’d like
function, not a add, multiply, to have added,
piece of data. count, etc.) multiplied, etc.

In addition to the functions that you can choose from the “Insert Function” dialog window
(which are numerous), Excel can also perform basic mathematical and logical operations.
Here are a few that may be useful. Remember, however, that functions must always start
with an equal sign. Otherwise, Excel won’t recognize your entry as a function.

Operator Name Example Result
+ Addition 1+1 2
- Subtraction 2-1 1
- Negation -2 -2
* Multiplication 2*2 4
/ Division 4/2 2
% Percent 10% 0.1
^ Exponents 10^2 100
= Equal to 2=1 FALSE
> Greater than 2>1 TRUE
< Less than 2<1 FALSE
>= Greater than or equal to 2>=1 TRUE
<= Less than or equal to 2<=1 FALSE
<> Not equal to 2<>1 TRUE


Hint: The numberpad (the set of keys on the right side of your keyboard) is your friend
in Excel. In addition to enabling you to type numbers quickly, it also includes
several basic mathematical operators (e.g. add, multiply, etc.).

Entering functions manually
You don’t have to use the “Insert Function” window to enter functions. If you know what
you’d like to enter and how it works, you can type it in yourself. To practice this, we’re
going to calculate the gross pay for each employee.

1. To begin, move your selection box to cell E5, just under “Gross Pay.”

2. Type “=”.

3. Next, click cell C5 (Frank Anderson's hourly wage. It should read “$14.96”).

4. Type “*”. The asterisk is Excel speak for multiply.

5. Click cell D5 (The number of hours Frank worked, which should be 80).

6. Press “Tab” to complete the function. It should look like this: =C5*D5. The result
should be $1,196.80.

Copying functions
Of course, that the function only calculates Frank's gross pay; it would help if it
calculated everyone's gross pay. It would be really tedious to insert the function again
for each cell. Fortunately, there’s an easier way to do this.

1. Begin by moving your selection box to cell E5, where we just typed the function.

2. Move your mouse cursor over the little black square in the corner of the cell.

3. Your cursor should turn into a small black cross. When it does, click and hold your
left mouse button and highlight cells D6 through D14.

4. Ta da! Now Excel has calculated everyone's gross pay.

Your Turn: Now that you've learned how to copy functions, do the same thing for the
function in cell D15 (the total hours) and copy it into cells E15 through I15.
Don't worry that there's no data to sum just yet.


Relative versus absolute references
Up to now, Excel has been pretty smart. It knew that when we copied the function to
calculate gross pay, we wanted it to calculate it for that row, not just recalculate it for
Frank. Sometimes this habit of Excel's isn't so smart, though, as we'll soon see.

In addition to gross pay, we have to calculate taxes and required retirement
withholdings. To set us up to do this, click on cell A17, two cells below “Smith, Joseph.”
Type “Tax rate:”. Type “0.33” in cell B17. Now, click on cell A18 and type “Retire:” and
type “0.08” in cell B18. Those are the rates for taxes and retirement respectively. To
make this easier, we'll say everyone has the same rates.

Your turn: It would be nice if the tax and retirement rates were in percentages. Use
what you learned earlier in the class to change the cell categories for the
two rates to percents, with no decimal places.

First off, let's calculate the taxes. To do this, we need to multiply the gross pay by the
tax rate. Start off by clicking on cell F5 and enter the following function.

=E5*B17
E5 is Frank's gross pay B17 is the tax rate

The result should $394.94. Looks good, right? Now, using what you've learned, copy
the function down through cell F14.

Uh oh! We must have done something wrong, because when we copy the function
down to the other cells, it looks like the picture at the right.

To see what’s wrong, click on cell F6 and then look at your formula bar. The
function should look like this:

=E6*B18

But wait a minute! Cell B18 is the retirement rate, not the tax rate! When we copied the
function into different cells, Excel assumes that we want to change which rows we’re
multiplying, too. This habit worked great to switch to a different employee's gross pay.
However, we don't want Excel to change which cell it's using for the tax rate; that stays
the same regardless.

What we need to do now is insert what’s called an absolute reference. With an absolute
reference, Excel will always use the value from the same cell (or row or column) no
matter where you copy the function. With a relative reference (the opposite of an
absolute one), Excel changes which rows and columns it uses to compute the function.

1. Move your selection box to cell F5, where we began the function.

2. Click inside the Formula bar and change the function to look like this: =E5*$B$17


3. Copy the new function down through cell F14 to delete the incorrect function we
made before.

Placing a dollar sign in front of the column (the letter) and the number (the row) tells
Excel to not change which cell it’s using. Since we placed dollar signs in front of the “B”
and the “17,” Excel will always use cell B17 when calculating this formula. If we had put
a dollar sign only in front of the “17,” Excel would have always used row 17 but would
change the column if we copied the function into another column.

Conditional functions
So far, we've been entering pretty simple functions that don't vary. However, we can also
have Excel make different calculations under different conditions. Such functions are
called “conditional” functions, not surprisingly. We'll start off with the most basic of
them: the IF function.

Here's the scenario. All employees, even part-time ones, have health coverage. If they
work more than half-time in a pay period, their contribution is only $20 per pay period.
If they work less than half-time in a pay period, the contribution increases to $100.
Assume that the pay period is two weeks. We could manually enter the amount by
looking at the number of hours worked and typing the correct health insurance
contribution. However, we can also have Excel figure it out for us. That's just what we're
going to do, using the IF function.

The IF function is entered as follows:

=[What you want is true or false, the value if it's true, the value if it's false]

In this case, what we want to know is whether an employee has worked more than 40
hours in a pay period. If s/he has, then the health insurance contribution is $20. If not,
then the contribution is $100. With this information, we can start entering the new
function. We'll use the “Insert Function” dialog box to enter it this time.

1. Select cell G5, just under “Health.”

2. Click on the “Insert” menu at the top of the screen, then
click “Function.” The insert function dialog box will open.

3. You can find the IF function quickly using the categories.
IF is what's called a “Logical” function, meaning it
assesses whether something is true or false. Click the
arrow next to the “select a category” box and click
“Logical.”

4. Double-click “IF” in the resulting list. It will open the “Function Arguments” box
shown below.


5. Move the “Function Arguments” box
to a more convenient location.
Then, click cell D5 (in the Hours
column). The entry “D5” should
appear in the “Logical_test” box.
Type >40 immediately after it. Here,
we're asking Excel to see if the
number of hours worked in cell D5 is
greater than 40.

6. Click inside the “Value_if_true” box
and enter 20 (the amount for people
who worked more than half-time).

7. Click inside the “Value_if_false” box and enter 100 (the amount for people who
worked less than half-time). The completed box should appear as in the
screenshot above.

8. Click “OK.”

9. Copy the function in cells G6 through G14.

Now Excel will automatically determine which amount each person needs to contribute
for health insurance.

Nested functions
Conditional functions are not only useful for returning specific values (e.g. “20”). They
can also make different calculations depending on whether your conditions are met. You
can accomplish this by “nesting” functions, that is, by having functions placed within
other functions.

We can nest functions by using our good friends, parentheses. If you remember back to
your math classes, things inside parentheses need to be done first. That’s how Excel
works, too. Parentheses are really important when constructing complex functions.
We're going to try it now to calculate the employees' retirement contributions.

At our fictional company, only full-time staff participate in the retirement program. They
are required to contribute 8% of their gross pay to the retirement program. Thus, we
need Excel to distinguish between full- and part-time staff. Fortunately, we already know
that the IF function is good for making such distinctions.

1. Select H5, just under “Retire.”

2. Enter the following function. Use the Formula bar this time, to make it quicker.
Below the function is a deconstruction of what it means.


=IF(B5=Full,(E5*$B$18),0)

If the employee is then their retirement If they're part-time,
full-time . . . contribution is 8% of then just put “N/A.”
their gross pay.

Notice that the IF function has another function (multiplying the gross pay by the
retirement contribution rate) nestled within it. Also, notice the absolute references in it
to ensure we don't run into the same problem as when we calculated the taxes.

3. Press “Enter” to complete the function.

Using text in functions
Once again, things must not be quite right with this function
because we got an odd error: This is Excel's strange
way of telling you that you did something wrong.

If you click back onto the cell with the function and move
your mouse over the small black down arrow to the left of
the cell, you can get more information on the problem. Your
options are shown in the picture to the right. If you mouse
over “Help on this error” and click on it, you'll find that the
problem we're having here is that Excel doesn't understand
the text in the function.

Most functions are mathematical or statistical operations. Hence, Excel generally expects
to see numbers. It's often not smart enough to tell the difference between text and
numbers. Thus, you have to tell it when your data is numerical. We can do this with
quotation marks. To make our function in cell H5 work, reenter it as follows:

=IF(B5=”Full”,(E5*$B$18),0)

Now, what we're telling Excel is the following: If you see the text “Full,” then return the
gross pay multiplied by 8%. If you don't see “Full,” then return 0.

Now that we've fixed the function, copy it down through the rest of column H.
For extra credit (using what we've already learned), change the cell category in column H
to currency and make everything right-aligned using the button.

Your turn: Now that you've learned about functions, insert a function to calculate the
net pay in column I by subtracting the taxes, health insurance, and
retirement contributions from the gross pay. Try nesting a SUM function
within the function to subtract from gross pay.


Intermission for some tidying
Now that we've completed calculating our payroll, we can start displaying it a bit more
visually by making charts. Before we do that, though, it would be nice to clean up our
spreadsheet a bit. As we were inserting our functions, we sometimes messed up our
gridlines or didn't make Excel display our data in dollars and cents. Using what you've
learned in this class and what you've already learned, clean up the worksheet a bit. Try
to make it look like the worksheet below.

Hint: To fix up the worksheet, you'll need to adjust the cell categories as well as the
alignment and borders .

Creating your chart
All right, now we can get down to the business of creating charts. The first and most
important thing to consider in creating charts is which part of your spreadsheet you want
represented. For instance, in our spreadsheet, including all of the information on one
chart would be confusing. However, we can create individual charts for various aspects
of our spreadsheet, such as how much each person was paid or the amount of payroll
that's taken up by taxes, health insurance, etc.

We'll start off by making a simple bar chart of each employee's gross pay. The first thing
we want to do is decide which columns (or rows) we need to have in the chart. To make
a chart showing each person's gross pay, we only need to select two columns: “Name”
and “Gross Pay.” Selecting the names will ensure that the people's names are included
on the chart. Let's get started!

1. Begin by selecting the “Name” column. To do this, move your mouse over “Name”
(cell A4), press and hold your left mouse button, and drag the pointer down the


column through A14. Release your left mouse button.

2. Press and hold the “Ctrl” button on your keyboard. This allows you to select
nonadjacent cells with your mouse.

3. While holding “Ctrl,” move your mouse over “Gross Pay” (cell E4), press and hold
your left mouse button, and drag the pointer down the column through E14. Don't
select the total pay in cell A15! Release your left mouse button. Your selection
should look like the screenshot below.

Notice that Excel
tells you which
columns and
rows you've
selected by
highlighting the
row and column
headers.

4. Click the chart icon on the toolbar to start your chart. You can also insert a
chart by going to the “Insert” menu, then clicking “Chart.”

The Chart Wizard and chart types
Telling Excel to insert a chart will open the Chart
Wizard, shown at left. The Chart Wizard walks
you through creating a chart. As you can see,
you have a variety of chart types (e.g. bar, pie,
etc.) available to you. In addition to those visible
at left, you can also create Cylinder, Cone, and
Pyramid charts.

Charts can often reveal relationships among your
information that are difficult to ascertain with only
numbers. However, selecting the right chart type
is essential to helping your audience better
understand the information you're presenting.
For instance, displaying the gross pay of each
employee as a pie chart might show better the
relative amount of the total payroll paid to each
employee, but a bar chart may allow you to compare the amounts more easily.


Each chart type also include sub-types. In the example above, we have the Column type
selected. Under the Column chart type, we have 2- and 3-D options as well as stacked
columns, layered columns, etc.

Now that we've learned a bit about chart types, let's continue making
our Gross Pay chart.

1. Click the “Bar” chart type and left, then select the 3-D option.

2. Click the button.

3. The next part of the Wizard, “Chart Source
Data” (shown at left) allows you to customize
which parts of your spreadsheet you want in
the chart. If you select the correct sections
before opening the Chart Wizard, you generally
don't need to mess around with this section.
We'll leave this alone. Click “Next.”

4. The next part of the Chart Wizard allows you to change various options about your
chart. We'll discuss each of these in turn.

Chart Options
The third step of the Chart Wizard opens the window below, where you can fiddle around
with your chart by adding titles, labels, etc. Here's and overview of what you can do on
this window.
These are the various aspects of your chart you
can manipulate. The tab for the option you're
currently changing will appear slightly raised.

Here is where
you can change
the parts of the A preview of
chart, in this your chart is
case by adding displayed that
titles and axis updates as you
labels. change options.


Now we'll continue with editing our chart.

1. On the Titles tab, name your chart “Gross Pay Per Employee.”
Name the X axis (in this case, the vertical axis) “Employee
Name” and the Z axis (horizontal) “Gross Pay.”

2. Click the Legend tab. Since we only have one variable in which we're
interested (gross pay), we don't really need a legend. Uncheck the
“Show legend” box to remove it.

3. Click the Data Labels tab. These options allow you to create
various labels, such as the gross pay amount, on the chart itself.
Check the “Value” box to do this.

The other tabs also allow you to do interesting things, although we won't change any
options on them for this chart. Axes allows you to change how the axes are displayed
and whether the data on them is shown. Gridlines affects whether there are periodic
lines on the chart to help people compare bars on the chart. Data Tables allows you to
display a small table of the data from which you're chart is made. While all of these are
useful in certain instances, we'll bypass them for this chart.

4. Click the “Next” button. The screen below will open.

5. This box lets you determine where your chart will “live” in your spreadsheet. You
have to options: as an object within the worksheet where your data is (“As object
in”) or as a completely separate tab in your spreadsheet (“As new sheet”). Which
you choose depends on how you plan on using the chart. Generally, if you plan on
printing or using the chart independent of the data, put it in a new sheet. That's
what we'll do now. Click the button next to “As new sheet” and name the sheet
“Gross Pay chart.” Now your new chart will open!


Editing your chart
Now that you have your chart, you may find that you want to change things on it. There
are various ways you can do this, from making major structural to simple cosmetic
alterations.

You can use the Chart toolbar (which is probably floating above your chart somewhere)
to make major changes. The Chart toolbar is shown below.
Change the chart type Add a legend Switch whether
(e.g. bar, line, etc.) or data table the chart is drawn
by the rows or
columns of the
source data.

If the chart toolbar is in your way, you can move it by clicking and holding your left
mouse button on the top bar of the toolbar and dragging the chart elsewhere. You can
even “dock” it next to other toolbars.

You can also edit the labels on your chart, such as the title or axis labels. You can edit
the font, color, size, and position. To edit an item, simply click on it. Try it now by
clicking on your title. You'll notice that the title is now
surrounded by a box. By clicking and holding your left
mouse button, you can reposition the title anywhere on the
page. You can also change the font style, size, and alignment on the formatting toolbar
near the top of the screen.


Editing axis labels is a little different. If you click on one of the labels (try
clicking on “Smith, Joseph), you do not actually select the individual label.
Instead, you'll notice that there's a tiny dot on each end of the axis.
Like when you clicked on the title, you can now change the font of all of the
axis labels using the formatting toolbar.

If you double-click on an axis label, you'll open
the “Format Axis” box (shown at left), which
gives you more options for adjusting your axis.
Double-clicking on any part of your chart
generally gives you a menu with various options
you can change. In this case, the options include
changing the line style, font, cell category
(remember that?), alignment, and scale. You can
access them by clicking the appropriate tab.

Changing the scale let's you adjust how high or
low the numbers go on your chart, as well how
often numerical labels will be inserted between
the high and low values. Excel usually just
guesses what scale to use, but you may need to
adjust it. For instance, click the “Scale” tab and click inside the box next to “Maximum.”
Change the value to $2,000. Click “OK.” Your chart will now go up to $2,000 instead of
$1,800.

Finally, you can also adjust the background of
your chart, known as the “Walls.” Notice how the
Walls are currently grey? Double-clicking click
anywhere on the grey area opens the “Format
Walls” box (shown at right). From here, you can
change the line colors and styles using the options
on the left side of the box, and you can change the
background color on the right side of the box.
Change the Wall color to white now by clicking the
white box on the right.

One final thing we might want to change are the data labels at the ends
of each bar. They are somewhat difficult to read where they are currently
located. If you click on one, all of them will be selected, as shown at left.
Once again, you can now change the font. If you continue to hold your left
mouse button on a data label and drag it, you can move the label.
Unfortunately, you have to move each label individually. However, this may be an
effective way to reposition the labels so that they're more readable.

Play time: Using what you've learned, adjust your Gross Pay chart to make it more to
your liking. When you're finished, click on worksheet “Sheet 1” to go back
to our data.


Different charts, different options
Now we have a new chart to make: something that shows the proportion of payroll
represented by the taxes, health insurance contributions, etc. This time, a bar chart
doesn't seem like it will do the job. However, a pie chart might work.

1. Start off by selecting cells F4 through I4. These will be the labels for our pie
chart. Making the labels part of your selection helps you avoid having to retype
them later in the process.

2. Press and hold the “Ctrl” button on the keyboard and select cells F15 through I15
(the totaled amounts for taxes, health insurance, etc.). You don't want to select
the total for gross pay in this case, however. Why? The proportion of gross pay is
what our chart will be measuring, so having the total amount in it will mess up the
percentages!

3. Click on the chart icon.

4. Select “Pie” in the “Chart type” box and the
3-D pie chart in the “Chart sub-type.”

5. Click “Next” to skip over the Chart Source Data options.

6. Now you'll be in the Chart options. Notice
that we have fewer chart options now than
we had with our bar chart: no options for
Axes, Gridlines, or Data Tables. Your
available options will depend on the type of
chart you're using.

7. Give your chart an appropriate name.

8. Since we have a pie chart, it may help to include a legend. Click on the
legend tab to change the options. Currently, the legend is located to the
right of the chart. Under 'Placement,” click bottom. As you'll notice from
the preview, this gives us more room for the chart itself.

9. Now click the “Data Labels” tab. Notice that you also have some
new options here, including the “Percentage.” Check the options
for “Value” and “Percentage.” You can also adjust how the value
and percentage are separated from each other using the
“Separator” options. Click the small down arrow next to
“Separator” and select “(new line)” to make the two labels appear
on different lines.


10. Click “Next” and choose to open your chart in a new worksheet. Name the
worksheet whatever you'd like.

11. Click “Finish.” Now you have a another new chart!

Further customization options
A different type of chart also gives you different editing options. For instance, as
mentioned before, we now have a legend telling about
the different parts of the pie chart. Click on the legend.
If you hold your left mouse button and drag, you can
reposition the legend wherever you want, as when you edited the title bar in the bar
chart we made earlier. While you have the legend selected, you can also change the font
as previously discussed. In fact, most of the editing options we discussed while making
the bar chart are also available here, and they're accomplished using the methods you've
already learned.

You can also resize the box, if you move the mouse pointer over one of the small dots
that appear around the legend. When you move your mouse over one of the dots, the
cursor will change to a small arrow. Click and hold your left mouse button, then drag the
pointer to enlarge or shrink the box.

Finally, you can also edit the coloration of your chart, including its individual elements.
For instance, we seem to have two blue-ish shades in our pie pieces (the individual
pieces of the pie are called “Series” in Excel). Excel automatically assigns these colors,
but we can manually change these if we want. To do this, click on the piece you want to


edit. The whole pie chart will be selected. Wait a
second. Now, click on the piece again. Do not double-
click the piece initially. If you do this, it will open the
options for changing the entire chart, not the single
piece you want. You will notice that the single piece you
want is selected (visible by the dots surrounding it, as
shown at left). If you now right-click on the piece, you'll
have the option to “Format Data Point.”

From here, you can change the color of the pie slice, much in the same manner we've
discussed before. Under the “Pattern” tab of the “Format Data Point” window, you can
select a new color for the slice from the color options on the right. Notice that you also
can change how the data label appears as well as other “Options,” such as the angle of
your pie chart.

There are many other options for editing and creating charts in Excel. This class is just a
very basic introduction to it. We encourage you to experiment with different options for
making your charts more useful and professional.

Last updated: February 10, 2009, by Buzzy Nielsen


Functions and Charts in Microsoft Excel

Recommandé

Recommandé

Contenu connexe

Tendances

Tendances (20)

En vedette

En vedette (17)

Similaire à Functions and Charts in Microsoft Excel

Similaire à Functions and Charts in Microsoft Excel (20)

Plus de North Bend Public Library

Plus de North Bend Public Library (20)

Dernier

Dernier (20)

Functions and Charts in Microsoft Excel