Transcripts for the above video clip:

Excel 2007 Graphs Data Labels Trick

One of the problems with data labels is that  it sometimes forces you to use its data labels.  So  just  to explain what I mean. Here is our graph – if I right click on the Series and I say Add Data Labels, you’ll see at the moment it has taken the numbers, you don’t have to use the numbers. I am going to right click on the Data Labels and I am going to say Format Data Labels and instead of using a value, maybe I will use a category name and you’ll see what appears here is the month. If I choose Series Name rather, the Series Name pulls through.  What happens if I don’t actually want any of those – if I want one of these labels to say this – Journal Entries.  What I can do,  is I can activate the labels – just close it – click on the labels once – (I am just going to go out of there) - if you click on them, they all activate.  Choose one, click on it again and you’ll notice that only that one is activated.  Without doing anything else, just click “equals =” and notice that your “equals =” has appeared in the formula bar. I am just going to go and link it to that, for example. When I click Enter, notice now that the label I have there is actually coming from this cell. So I can, if I want to, go and change this to be something else. For example – Retrenchments – when I click Enter- notice now that this data label changes. So it is quite a nice way to have your chart interact with your spreadsheet.