Creating Charts in Excel 2007

A chart (also known as a graph outside Excel circles) is a way to present a table of numbers visually. The visual display allows you, for example, to quickly examine trends or compare the relative contributions of various items. Excel provides you with the tools to create a variety of charts.

Whoever said a picture is worth a thousand words is most certainly referring to a chart. We like looking at pictures more than we like looking at sheets of data. Charts, sometimes referred to as graphs, provide an effective way to illustrate your worksheet data by making the relationships between numbers easier to see. The chart turns numbers into shapes and enables you to compare the shapes to each other.

If you've ever spent hours drawing a chart on graph paper, you'll really appreciate the ease with which you can create dozens of different chart styles using your Excel data. And you don't really have to draw a thing! With just a few decisions on your part and a few clicks of the mouse, you have a two- or three-dimensional illustration of your data.

Charts let you get your thoughts across with simplicity and strength and, because different charts may cause you to draw varied conclusions, they also prod you to ask questions about what you are seeing. Whatever the idea you are trying to convey, charts make it easier.