Excel Charts & Graphs: Learn the Basics for a Quick Start - YouTube

Channel: Leila Gharani

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In this video, I'm going to take you
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through the basics of Excel charts.
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You're going to learn how to insert a chart,
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how to adjust one, how you can improve your chart,
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how to add more series to your chart,
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and how you can create combination charts.
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(soft music)
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Now I've been given this data set
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and I've been told to visualize this.
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To insert a chart, all I have to do is to highlight this,
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go to Insert, and click on a chart from here.
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If I'm not sure which chart to pick,
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I can click on Recommended Charts
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and Excel gives me some proposals.
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So let's say I want to go with a bar chart,
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I just have to click on it and press OK.
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I had highlighted the data set before
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so let's say I didn't do that
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just somewhere in an empty cell.
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And I go to Insert and I insert a column chart.
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I just get an empty canvas
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because the data is missing from here.
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But notice what happens in general when you insert charts.
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You get this Chart Tools options activated here.
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And in Excel 2013 and 16, you're given two tabs,
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a designed and a format tab.
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Going back to our empty canvas,
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if I want to add data to this,
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I can click on the design tab and click on Select Data.
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Or I can right mouse click and go to Select Data.
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So with Excel charts, just like other objects in Excel,
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you get many different ways of getting to the same place.
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So just use the method that you feel most comfortable with.
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It might look like charts has a lot of options,
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but they're just repeated.
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So we go to Select Data now we can add
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the different elements of the chart manually.
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This part are my series values that I want to add in.
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But first comes the title, so that's the name.
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This is where I can manually input it,
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or I can select it from here.
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The values are the numbers, those are these.
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It added these, it's missing these labels.
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To give it the labels, you have to click on this side, Edit,
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and you just have to highlight them and you get them in.
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This is the way that you can edit your series,
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and you can add series, you can also remove your series.
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Now a fast way to do this
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is to just click on this chart data range box here
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and just select this whole thing,
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and Excel figures out where to pop what.
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The quickest way of inserting a chart
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is to highlight this, and click Alt + F1.
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This inserts your default charts.
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How do you change that?
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You just have to go to Insert,
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and bring up the dialog box for all charts,
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just click on this little icon here.
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I'm going to go to the line chart.
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Let's say, line charts are the charts that I use most often.
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So I'm going to right mouse click and set as default.
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Let's just cancel that, delete this,
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this is already highlighted,
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all I have to do is press Alt + F1
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and I get my line chart here.
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(upbeat music)
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Let's say I've decided to insert a bar chart for this.
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I'm going to go to Insert and directly select it from here.
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Your chart is comprised of different chart elements.
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So this is a chart element,
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this grid lines are chart elements, the title is an element.
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To add in more elements or to take away elements,
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you can control that with this plus sign.
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So let's say I want to add a data table to this,
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I can just tick mark it here.
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To add, Legend doesn't make sense here,
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but to add data labels, I can just tick mark this.
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With this arrows, you can automatically select
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where you want it.
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So these are basically the most common options
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of that element or the most used options of that element.
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So I can say if I want inside base inside and
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then I can go to more options,
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and I get this dialog box pop up.
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This dialog box here, that's where you have full control
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over all of the options of that element.
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Depending on the element that you select,
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you have different options.
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So it really pays off that you take some time
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and you go through the options
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of the most common chart elements.
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So example, the columns or the bars,
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the axis options and so on.
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To bring that box up again,
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you can double click, you get this,
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you can also use the shortcut key Ctrl + 1,
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and you come to here,
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you can also right mouse click
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and format data series and you get here.
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Once this is activated, it stays activated
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when you're in your chart so you can easily
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move through the different elements and adjust your options.
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Now, let's say my boss sees this report
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and he's like, why is WenCal up here?
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Switch this around because I want it to look like
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this data table, I want Fighter to be on top.
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So that's an easy adjustment that you can make
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by just changing the option from here.
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That's under Axis Options
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and you can say categories in reverse order
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that switches things around.
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The most important options for adjusting things
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of the chart elements is found in the first one.
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For example, if you want to bring these columns,
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these bars together, you just have to
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activate this option here and change the gap width.
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So instead of 182, I'm going to go to 80%.
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Now to remove an element, I can remove it
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by just taking away the the tick mark
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or I can just press Delete directly from here.
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(upbeat music)
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To adjust formatting of the different elements,
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you can do that by clicking on the element first,
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and doing it directly from here.
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So you get the fill options, borders and so on.
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Or you can do it from up here.
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Now if some of these formatting
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is some things that you use a lot,
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you can add them to your Quick Access Toolbar
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like I've done here.
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To do that, all you have to do is right mouse click
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and click Add to Quick Access Toolbar.
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You can also directly format by right mouse clicking on,
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for example, the series here and changing the fill color
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and the outline directly from here.
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Let's say to improve the visualization of this,
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I decide to make my axis line thicker.
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That's an option that's with the axes.
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First I have to activate the axis options
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then I have to go to the fill and line options
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and here I can decide for line,
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okay, I want a solid line, I want it to be dark,
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I'm fine with that color, let's make it thicker.
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To make this standout, I can actually directly do that
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from the home tab.
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I can decide to make it bigger and I can make it bold.
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(upbeat music)
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Now I've been told to add in the budget
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because it's going to be nice to compare the actual to budget.
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So I find the budget data,
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now just for the sake of simplicity,
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I'm just going to make a formula here.
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This is my budget data now, I want to add this to my chart,
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how can I do that?
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The fastest option is that you click on your chart
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and you just expand this, that's it.
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But the very important part is that you've clicked
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on the right place before you expand this.
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Had I clicked here, and I wanted to expand this,
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I can't, it's stuck.
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So I can expand this but I can't expand that.
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I have to click on the chart area,
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and then I can expand this.
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Another way of doing this is to right mouse click
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and go to Select Data.
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Here you can manually add in more series.
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To do that, I can say add,
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now I'm going to add in budget again, okay so two times.
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I can directly type in the name,
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so let's create a budget duplicate,
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and for the series values, I'm going to select these.
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Here, I get three series added.
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This is this one, then comes number two and number three.
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To change the order around,
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you can do it by pushing the series
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up and down from this view.
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To delete one, you just highlight it, and you click Remove.
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Sometimes it can happen that you add in a series
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and you don't see it because it's either white
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or has no feel, it's invisible.
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To find it, you can do it by this drop down here.
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And this drop down is really important
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because it shows you all the elements
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in your chart that are active.
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You can find your series directly by just clicking on it
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and then going about to format as you see fit.
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Okay, so don't forget about this drop down
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so you can easily switch between
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the different chart elements from here directly.
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(upbeat music)
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So now let's say my boss sees this and he's like,
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well, can you show the budget as another series,
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maybe as a line series, or maybe just as markers?
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To do that, you need to right mouse click on your series,
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actually on any series, and go to Change Series Chart Type.
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Now Excel takes you directly to the combo view,
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where you can see all your different series here
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and you can easily change the chart type
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from this drop down.
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This is the advantage of Excel 2013 and 16.
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In Excel 2010, you actually have to select really the series
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that you want to change the chart type of
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before you change the chart type.
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But in this case it doesn't matter,
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if I want to change the chart type of this,
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I can still click on this and say change series chart type
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and I come to this view.
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If I don't click on any series
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and just click somewhere outside and say change chart type.
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So notice I don't get Change Series Chart Type,
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I get Change Chart Type,
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I can change the entire chart type.
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To change different portions, I have to go to the combo tab.
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Now the advantage of clicking on a series first
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is that you directly go there when you select this option.
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So now for budget, I'm going to change it to
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align with markers, I'm going to say okay.
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For this line series, I'm actually going to say
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I don't want the line, I just want the markers.
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The marker options are right here.
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Right here, I can say I want to use the built in,
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let's use a line, we can increase it,
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we can change the fill to the fill color that we want,
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we can take away the border of the markers.
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Now we can go about improving on this chart,
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we can add data labels to this.
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And then from the options, we can decide where we want them.
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Now in this case, it doesn't make sense to put them outside
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because they're kind of going to overlap with our budget.
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So we could do inside base,
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we can change the color to white.
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And for these ones, we're going to add data labels,
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and we're going to actually put them on top.
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Two elements are missing from this chart
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to make it more readable.
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One is the chart title, and the other is the legend here.
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Now I can go directly here and say show the legend on top
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and I can type in a chart title.
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That could be Sales Actual versus budget.
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And the legend here, I want this to be actual, and budget.
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This is taken from my series name.
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So all I have to do is change this to actual.
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So now my boss should be happy with this visualization.
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(upbeat music)
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So this was the basics of Excel charts.
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If you want to dig deeper in charts,
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I have a lot of videos on this YouTube channel.
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I also have a lot of posts on my website,
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so make sure you check those out.
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If you want to dig even deeper,
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I have a course on this, an online course
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that's over seven hours long that includes templates
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of different type of charts
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that are used in the business world
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so mainly in corporate reports.
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If you're interested in that,
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I'm going to put the link to it in the descriptions below.
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I hope you enjoyed this video.
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For more videos like this,
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don't forget to subscribe to this channel
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so that you can get updates when new videos come out.