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Step 1 - Formatting Your Charts

Formatting your charts will improve their appearance.

There are a couple of ways to apply formatting to your charts:

1) Using the Formatting toolbar.

2) Using the Chart drop-down menu.

3) Using the Chart shortcut menu.

All of the different chart items can be formatted separately and the main components are summarised below:

Alignment (for text), Style (for lines), Weight (for lines) Borders (for areas), Patterns (for areas) Number Formats (for axes).

A lot of the tabs and dialog boxes for formatting charts are the same as those used for other formatting tasks.

You can distinguish different series on the same chart by changing their colour, borders, patterns and data markers (line charts). ??

Step 2 - Using the Formatting toolbar

You can select a series and use the Fill Color drop-down to change the fill colours

All the formatting toolbars and commands can also be used to help format your charts

 Font and Font Size drop-downs

 Fill Color - Changes the background colour of the chart item.

 Font Color - Changes the colour of the font of the current selection.

 Bold - Toggles bold on the current selection.

 Underline - Toggles underline on the current selection.

 Italics - Toggles italics on the current selection.

Step 3 - Using the Chart Shortcut Menu

The quickest way to make any changes especially formatting is to double click with the left mouse button on the chart item you want to modify.

Alternatively you can select the chart item and use the Chart menu.

Or you can right mouse click on the item and use the shortcut menu.

You can change the design and size of the text on your charts to improve the overall appearance of the chart.

You can change the formatting for any of the chart elements.

Select the specific chart item you want to modify, right click and choose Format.

Depending on which chart item is selected will depend on the formatting options available on the (Format) dialog box.

CONSISTENT CHART / SIZE

Step 5 - Default Colour Palette

These are the colours that are used for the fill and line colours on the default colour palette.

Step 5 - Things to Remember

The chart wizard only helps you to create charts. It does not help you format them.

You can quickly change the colour of a series on a chart by using the Fill Color on the Formatting toolbar.

You can double click on an item to quickly display the corresponding Format dialog box or you can use the shortcut key (Ctrl + 1).

It is possible to enhance your charts with pictures, word art, clip art, text, lines, arrows etc.

You cannot have any colours on your charts that are not on the colour palette

Double clicking anywhere on a chart takes you directly to the Format dialog box for that particular item