Excel Chart Speed Tips

Author: David H. Ringstrom

Excel expert David Ringstrom, CPA, shares a variety of tricks and techniques you can use to create and automate Excel charts in this informative course. He covers several helpful features Excel offers, including the Recommended Charts feature, the Sparkline feature, and the PivotChart feature. In addition, David shows you step-by-step how to avoid repetitive formatting, create self-updating chart titles, summarize data based on a single criterion, and liven up your charts with clip art.

David demonstrates every technique at least twice: first, on a PowerPoint slide with numbered steps, and second, in the subscription-based Microsoft 365 (formerly Office 365) version of Excel. David draws your attention to any differences in the older versions of Excel (2021, 2019, 2016 and earlier) during the course as well as in his detailed handouts. David also provides an Excel workbook that includes most of the examples he uses during the course.

Microsoft 365 is a subscription-based product that provides new feature updates as often as monthly. Conversely, the perpetual licensed versions of Excel have feature sets that don't change. Perpetual licensed versions have year numbers, such as Excel 2021, Excel 2019, and so on.

Publication Date: February 2023

Designed For
Practitioners who can benefit by creating and automating Excel charts.

Topics Covered

• Adding/removing chart features rapidly by way of the improved chart interface in Excel 2013 and later
• Applying a consistent look and feel to your charts by way of chart templates
• Building a basic chart within an Excel worksheet
• Converting a chart to a static picture for archival purposes or for use in other applications
• Creating pivot charts from lists of data in Excel
• Exploring the Recommended Charts feature in Excel 2013 and later
• Displaying data on two different axes with Combo charts in Excel 2013 and later
• Duplicating the formatting of one chart into a second chart
• Eliminating the need to manually resize charts when data is added—automate this with tables instead
• Enlivening charts with clip art
• Filtering data within pivot tables in Excel 2010 and later by way of the Slicer feature

Learning Objectives

• Identify how to create self-expanding charts by way of Excel's Table feature
• Recognize how to save time by copying chart formatting between charts and using chart templates
• Identify new charting capabilities in Excel 2013 and later

Level
Basic

Instructional Method
Self-Study

NASBA Field of Study
Computer Software & Applications (2 hours)

Program Prerequisites
A basic understanding of Excel.

Advance Preparation
None