Creating Meaningful Charts

Sometimes it is useful to display data in a chart instead of in a table. In Excel 2007 and Excel 2010, the options for creating bar charts, pie charts, and other charts have been enhanced.

To convert our example table into a simple but informative column chart, perform the following steps:

In the same way you created a column chart, you can create a 2D, 3D, or line chart (see Figure 1-41). To do this, select a chart format by clicking the Line button to open the menu.

To display the values in the Profit Margin column by month, you can use a pie chart. Do the following:

Excel 2010 provides many formatting options you can use to emphasize values in pie charts.

Do the following:

In Excel 2010, working with charts is a lot easier. The options for editing and formatting are more extensive, and fully formatted charts can be created with just a few clicks.