Microsoft Excel has a lot of great charting and graphing features and can create a wide variety of chart graph and plot styles. In this tutorial, we will discuss how to create a simple column chart from a table of information inside of Microsoft Excel.
To begin with, we need to set up our data in a table format. For example, we have three months and five salespeople, and we want to create a chart that visually represents this information. Then we need to select the range of data that we wish to use to create the chart. We can go ahead and highlight the data range that we want to use and then go to the insert tab at the top.
When we click on the insert tab, we will find the chart section, which includes all the different kinds of charts that Excel will allow us to do. We can choose the chart type we need, which in this case is a column chart. There are different types of column charts available, such as clustered, stacked, and 100% stacked column charts.
Once we have selected the chart type we need, Excel will create the chart for us. We will also notice that a new section called chart tools is inserted into the ribbon at the top with three tabs underneath, design, layout, and format.
If we have our chart selected, these tools will always be available to us. However, if we click off our chart, the options disappear. If we want to create a different type of chart, we can follow the same steps and select the chart type we need.
It’s important to note that different chart types show different things, and we need to know what we want to show from our data before we can select the correct chart type. For example, a clustered column chart allows us to compare values across a series but not really the total, whereas a stacked column chart allows us to compare the totals and see how each element goes to making up the whole.
In conclusion, creating a column chart in Excel is a simple process. We need to set up our data in a table format, select the range of data we wish to use to create the chart, and then choose the chart type we need. Excel will create the chart for us, and we can customize it using the tools available in the chart tools section.