It is no longer essential to rely on the manual making of the chart in Microsoft excel as most mortals do. With the help of ready-made Excel Chart templates, making premium charts is a serious child’s play which saves you on your precious time and energy. It helps you to focus on your data and takes away the worries from you about formatting the chart in accordance with your needs. Microsoft Excel Worksheets and Format Templates. 10 Excel Project Timeline Templates March 1st 2018 Excel Templates Project timeline with milestones fice TemplatesExcel Project Timeline Templates Free Excel Project Management TemplatesExcel Project Timeline Templates Free Sample,Example. Don’t waste time creating your own templates, use these free Excel ones instead. Instead of spending countless hours creating your own templates, use one of the free Excel templates on our list and you’ll make all the messy, overwhelming parts of your life that much easier. Whether you’re starting a business or managing your personal finances, this list of 52 Excel templates has you covered. On the View menu, click Print Layout. Click the Insert tab, and then click the arrow next to Chart. Click a chart type, and then double-click the chart you want to add. When you insert a chart into Word or PowerPoint, an Excel worksheet opens that contains a table of sample data.
How to Create a Chart in Microsoft Excel?
Charts can simplify even the most complex data. Unlike lengthy statements and countless words, a visual representation of information makes it easier for individuals to remember essential details. Moreover, documents or articles with charts, diagrams, or graphs look more interesting than with blocks of text alone. For this reason, individuals and organizations make use of illustrations in print materials, business presentations, reports, presentation of survey results, and others. Aside from that, one can also use a chart to track performance, plot a schedule, or have an organized seating arrangement. Common types of charts include line graph, area graph, scatter plot, bar graph, and pie chart. If you need help in creating a graphical representation of numerical data or information, we got your back! Provided below are five simple steps to guide you in creating a chart with the use of Microsoft Excel.
The Excel Graph templates are saved in the system itself, so it will work in the same system we saved the template. The Excel Chart template contains all the formatting done earlier, so in case we need to change the format of the chart we have to do it manually. Recommended Articles. This has been a guide to Chart Templates in Excel. Steps to Use a chart template. Select the data for your chart. Click on the Insert tab in the Ribbon. Open the Insert Chart dialog. If you are using Excel then select the “All Chart Types” option from the bottom of any dropdown in the Charts chunk. If you are using PowerPoint and Word then select the “Chart” button.
1. Gather Information
Before you begin drafting a chart or graph, you first need to gather all the information which you will make a visual presentation of. If you are about to create a wedding seating chart for a smooth-flowing seating process, make sure that you have a list of the guests who confirmed their attendance for the event. Regardless of the type of chart you are going to make, be it an organizational chart, flow chart, Gantt chart, pie chart, etc., gathering the necessary information is an essential step. It helps you create a graph or diagram with no hassle later on.
2. Open Microsoft Excel
Microsoft Excel is a spreadsheet program that has built-in features enabling users to map or plot a graph for both qualitative and quantitative data. Through this program, you can create any type of chart you want based on the data you have at hand. Whether you are creating a Gantt chart, line graph, bubble chart, budget worksheet, organizational flow chart, or other kinds of chart, Microsoft Excel will make the process easier for you.
3. Enter Data
Before typing in the information, be sure to determine if it is quantitative or qualitative. For quantitative data, you may create a bar graph, histogram, pie chart, or scatter plot. On the other hand, you can present qualitative data through infographics and timelines. For numerical information, you first need to type in the data on the blank cells of the spreadsheet. Make sure that you categorize them in a table-like manner for it to make sense when you insert a graph afterwards. However, if you are creating an organizational chart or flowchart, you can insert the shapes first and fill it thereafter.
4. Insert Graph
After typing in the information, Microsoft Excel recommends different types of charts you can make use of to present your data. To insert a graph or chart in Microsoft Excel, you first need to select the cells which contain the information. Be sure to select everything, including the titles and labels. Then, click Insert > Chart and choose a chart type. Now, you have a graph or chart on the spreadsheet.
5. Proofread
Lastly, check the information from the chart title to the multiple data series. Leave no room for errors before you print, publish, or post your chart. As an alternative, you may download our ready-made infographic and chart templates. With our templates, you won’t have to create a chart from scratch.
Today’s author, Ben Rampson, a Program Manager on the Excel team.
Customers who author charts in presentations and reports often spend a significant amount of effort modifying their charts to get them looking just the way they want. While the new Chart Style and Chart Layout features in Office 2007 provide some great one-click options to quickly alter the appearance of a chart, there are still times when one needs to modify a chart even further. A company policy may require that a chart use particular colors, a project may demand a necessary chart layout, or a complex chart may necessitate the setting of many specific element properties. While there is always a onetime cost required to set up a chart for the first time, there is an easy way avoid these costs in the future when you need to re-create a similar chart.
One frequently underutilized feature in charting is the Chart Template. A chart template allows a user to quickly save and reapply settings from a previously created chart. Chart templates are standalone .crtx files that can be applied in a similar manner as chart types. In addition to saving the chart type, template files also contain chart element setting and formatting information. This information includes settings such as line and fill properties, axis settings, and element placement.
It also should be noted that chart templates do not save customer data, preventing customer information from being copied and saved into template files (customer data includes: data point and series values, text on titles, etc.). Although data is not saved, the existence, formatting, and layout of all elements is stored in the template. Assume a template is created from a chart that contains a title. When the template is applied the resulting chart will have a title in same location and with the same formatting as the chart used to generate the template, however, the default text of “Title” will appear in the element since the title’s data has not been stored in the template.
Steps to Create a Chart Template
- Insert a chart to use as a starting point for your template. Note that chart templates can be created and used in any of the three Office applications that have the shared charting engine: Excel, PowerPoint, and Word.
- Format the chart the way you normally would until the chart has the desired appearance. In my example I have made the following modifications to the chart:
- Applied a custom fill color to the series
- Deleted the legend
- Removed the horizontal axis line
- Set the horizontal axis maximum to 10
- Changed the line color of the gridlines and vertical axis line
- Reversed the categories order on the vertical axis
- Set the horizontal axis crosses at setting to maximum value
- Added a chart title and entered the title text
- Changed the chart titles font to be the same color as my series
The resulting chart:
- With the chart selected, click on the Design tab in the Ribbon
- Click on the “Save As Template” button located in the Type chunk
- Enter a template name and click SaveNote: Saving chart templates as standalone .crtx files is a new feature for Office 2007. By using standalone files, chart templates can easily be shared amongst different users. The saved template location for Windows Vista users is C:Users<user_name>AppDataRoamingMicrosoftTemplatesCharts (C:Documents and Settings<user_name>Application DataMicrosoftTemplatesCharts for Windows XP users). This folder location can also be found using the “Manage Templates…” button in the Chart Type dialog.Once a template file is saved in this folder it can be accessed and applied in any of the three charting applications.
Steps to Use a chart template
Microsoft Chart Templates Free
- Select the data for your chart
- Click on the Insert tab in the Ribbon
- Open the Insert Chart dialog
- If you are using Excel then select the “All Chart Types” option from the bottom of any dropdown in the Charts chunk
- If you are using PowerPoint and Word then select the “Chart” button.
- Tip: if you have an existing chart you can select the “Change Chart Type” option to launch the same dialog
- Select the Template tab from the top of the left navigation menu
- Select a chart template from those listed on the right side of the dialog
- Select “OK” to apply the templateThe resulting inserted chart created from a different data set. While not completely finished it comes very close:
- Complete the chart by adding back the text elements that were not saved in the chart template
- In my example all I need to do to complete my chart is to modify the chart title’s text. In other cases it may be necessary to make additional minor changes such as tweaking axis settings stored in the template that do not work for the current data set.
Creating this chart was simple and only required two steps, inserting a chart using the desired template and entering the title’s text. This is a significantly easier process when compared to the list of steps I completed to build this chart for the first time. The finished chart:
Note that the above chart has fairly complex formatting and takes great advantage of the template feature; however, even templates with limited formatting can still save significant time in the chart creation process.
In summary, when creating a complex chart that you may use again in the future, remember to take advantage of chart templates. This powerful tool in charting can help you avoid duplicating effort and allows you to easily generate consistently formatted charts.
Microsoft Office Chart Templates
If you have any ideas on how we can improve chart templates in the future please feel free to leave your suggestions in the comments section.