Working with Excel Charts

Some common chart modifications:

Moving and resizing charts
Copying a chart
Deleting a chart
Adding chart elements
Moving and deleting chart elements
Printing charts

Before you can modify a chart, the chart must be activated. To activate an embedded chart, click it. Doing so activates the chart and also selects the element that you click. To activate a chart on a chart sheet, just click its sheet tab.

Moving and resizing a chart

If your chart is an embedded chart, you can freely move and resize it with you mouse. Click the chart's border and then drag the border to move the chart. Drag any of the eight "handles" to resize the chart. The handles are the black dots that appear on the chart's corners and edges when you click the chart's border. When the mouse pointer turns into a double arrow, click and drag to resize the chart.

When a chart is selected, you can use the Format> Size controls to adjust the height and width of the chart. Use the spinners, or type the dimensions directly into the Height and Width controls.

You also can use standard cut and paste techniques to move an embedded chart. In fact, this is the only way move a chart from one worksheet to another. Select the chart and choose Home> Clipboard> Cut (or press Ctrl+X). Then activate a cell near the desired location and choose Home> Clipboard> Paste (or press Ctrl+V). The new location can be in a different worksheet or even in a different workbook. If you paste the chart to a different workbook, it will be linked to the data in the original workbook.

To move an embedded chart to a chart sheet (or vice versa), select the chart and choose Chart Tools> Location> Move Chart to display the Move Chart dialog box.

Copying a chart

To make an exact copy of an embedded chart, press and hold down the Ctrl key. Click the chart and then drag the mouse pointer to a new location. To make a copy of a chart sheet, use the same procedure, but drag the chart sheet's tab.

You also can use standard copy and paste techniques to copy a chart. Select the chart (an embedded chart or a chart sheet) and choose Home> Clipboard> Copy (or press Ctrl+C). Then activate a cell near the desired location and choose Home> Clipboard> Paste (or press Ctrl+V). The new location can be in a different worksheet or even in a different workbook. If you paste the chart to a different workbook, it will be linked to the data in the original workbook.

Deleting a chart

To delete an embedded chart, press Ctrl and click the chart (this selects the chart as an object). Then press Delete. When the Ctrl key is pressed, you can select multiple charts, and then delete them all with a single press of the Del key.

To delete a chart sheet, right-click its sheet tab and choose Delete from the shortcut menu. To delete multiple chart sheets, select them by pressing Ctrl while you click the sheet tabs.

A few chart elements consist of multiple objects. For example, the data labels element consists of one label for each data point. To more or delete one data label, click once to select the entire element and then click a second time to select the specific data label. You can then move or delete the single data label.

Adding chart elements

To add new elements to a chart (such as a title, legend, data labels, or gridlines), use the controls in the Chart Tools> Layout group. These controls are arranged into logical groups, and they all display a dropdown list of options.

Moving and deleting chart elements

Some of the elements within a chart can be moved. The movable chart elements include the titles, the legend, and data labels. To move a chart element, simply click it to select it. Then drag its border. The easiest way to delete a chart element is to select it and then press Delete. You can also use the controls in the Chart Tools> Layout group to turn of the display of a particular chart element. For example, to delete data labels, choose Chart Tools> Layout> Labels> Data Labels> None.

Printing Charts

Printing embedded charts is nothing special; you print them the same way that you print a worksheet. As long as you include the embedded chart in the range that you want to print, Excel prints the chart as it appears on-screen. When printing a sheet that contains embedded charts, it's a good idea to preview first (or use Page Layout View) to ensure that your charts do not span multiple pages. If you created the chart on a chart sheet, Excel always prints the chart on a page by itself.

If you select an embedded chart and use Office> Print, Excel prints the chart on a page by itself and does notprint the worksheet.

If you don't want a particular embedded chart to appear on your printout, select the chart and display the Size And Properties dialog box. Choose Chart Tools> Format, and then click the dialog box launcher in the Size group. In the Size And Properties dialog box, click the Properties tab and remove the check mark from the Print Object check box.

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