Advanced Excel Graphs

How To Use Advanced Excel Graphs

Advanced Excel graphs are relatively simple to use with a little assistance from an online Excel Training course. First you need to know where to go to find the different types of graphs that are available in Excel. Graphs are also referred to as charts so you need to find the charts link in your toolbar options. Depending in the version of Excel that you are using the location of the link can vary.

If you cannot find the link simply press F1 on your keyboard which will access the help function and you can type in charts or graphs which will give you step by step instructions on how to access this application. The help function will also give you information on what the different advanced Excel graphs are and for which type of applications they will be most suitable for.

Once you have accessed the Chart function you will be presented with the most commonly used graphs in Excel for you to choose from. Simply holding your mouse pointer over a specific graph link until it is highlighted will give you a short description of what that graph can do or what it is used for. Don’t click on the link as this will open the advanced Excel graphs and will not provide you with the information that you need.

The most common types of advanced Excel graphs are Column or Bar Charts and Pie Charts. Column and Bar Charts are used to compare different data values over a number of categories. These charts are created along an X and Y axis that any person who has a high school education is familiar with. These charts are flat but in an Excel chart appear in a 3 dimensional layout.

Pie Charts are used to determine the percentage that a specific category plays in a whole. A Pie Chart is usually displayed as circle that has been segmented into different colours. These colours all relate to a specific category and are sized according to the percentage that category forms of the whole. A legend placed alongside the pie chart will help link the different to their specific colour code within the whole pie.

Advanced Excel Line graphs are also very popular and are mainly used to determine different values over a period of time. Line charts can also be colour coded to display different categories and the value of these categories over a specified time period. Line charts are fairly simple to use and create using the two methods that are employed to create graphs and charts in Excel.

The first of these two methods is to create a chart from scratch meaning that you will need to add all the data and values necessary manually. The other method which is much simpler is to take an existing worksheet and then translate it into the specific advanced Excel graphs that are most compatible for your scenario. However, this second method can be rather complicated and you will need to ensure that you are skilled at creating spreadsheets before using the chart function.

There are a number of other advanced Excel graphs that you can have access to and are more complicated than the above mentioned charts. These graphs include area charts, scatter graphs, different types of stock graphs, a variety of surface charts, as well as doughnut, bubble and radar charts. Each of these chart categories have a number of options to select from so that you can design and create graphs that are unique and best suit your requirements for analysing data through the use of charts.