Using the Layout Tab for Excel 2010 Charts and Graphs – Part 1

Microsoft Excel 2010 features a contextual Layout Tab which is useful because of  its various tools and commands for creating and editing Chart Areas, Plot Areas and Chart Titles. Formatting of Chart Titles involve commands like the Chart Title button, More Title Options button, and the Chart Title dialogue. Similarly, a Format Chart Area dialogue is available for customizing the Chart Area in Excel.

An Axis Titles button is available in the Labels Group, allowing users to create Horizontal and Vertical Axis Titles which can easily be edited through mouse-click functionality.

The Format Axis Title dialogue contains options pertaining to the Fill, Border and Font of Axis Titles.

Watch the free video here, transcripts for the entire video follow:

Do you need to learn Microsoft Excel? Get 35 hours of Microsoft Excel training – click here.

Video transcripts:

Hello, and welcome back.

We’ve now seen how to create straightforward charts and graphs from data on Worksheets and to make some straightforward decisions about Style, including the use of the Office 2010 Themes. In this section, we’re going to go onto the next stage in this whole process. We’re going to use the same example we used in the last one, but this time we’re going to look at what’s available on the Layout tab. So, let’s get started.

So, first of all let me select the Layout tab and I can see a number of commands available there and we’re going to start with this group here in the Labels group and as part of that we’re going to start looking at the terminology that’s used in charts and graphs in Excel. First of all, the whole of the area of the chart is referred to as the Chart Area and everything else appears within the Chart Area. The part which is actually the rectangular area containing the data Series, the data markers, and so on is called the Plot Area. And above the Plot Area, normally, will have a Chart Title, but as we’re going to see now it’s possible to do quite a few different things with the Chart Title. So, first of all, let’s click on the Chart Title to select it and note the little border and selection handles that appear around it.

Now, we’re going to spend a little bit of time looking at options for formatting the Chart Title because it’s pretty typical of some of the other elements that appear on charts and graphs. So, we’re going to use it as an example of what can be done. One very simple thing you can do is if I click inside the Chart Title area you notice that the surrounding border changes from a continuous border to a dashed border and once that happens I can actually edit using the keyboard, the Chart Title pretty much in the way that I edit text normally.

But more of that later. First of all, let’s delete this chart all together. Select, press the Delete key and let’s go back to the beginning and we will make sure we’ve got our data selected. Select the table, hold the Control key, select the next one, Alt-F1, brings up my Default chart type. Now, if I drag that chart, slightly different position, make it a little bit bigger. Make it a little bit easier to work on. By dragging the sizing handle, there’s my chart. Note that when Excel 2010 created a new chart the Default is to create it without any Title at all. And the first thing you may want to do when you’ve created a chart is to click on the Layout tab and if you use the Chart Title button in the Labels group, the Default is the first option, None – Do not display a chart Title. And the option we saw just now was actually the third one, Above the Chart – Display the Title at the top of the chart area and resize the chart. Now note what happens when we actually add a Title like this. The chart itself, the Plot Area, inside the chart area is resized and the Chart Title appears. Let me undo that, go back to the Chart Title button again, click on the dropdown and this time choose the middle option, which is Centered Overlay Title. Watch what happens in this case. Now in this case, the Chart Title appears but it’s overlaid on the whole of the Chart Area. In fact, it goes over part of the Plot Area and the Plot Area itself is not resized with that option.

So, now that we have a Chart Title partly overlaying the Plot Area, let’s go back to that Chart Title button again and look at that bottom option which is the More Title Options button. Now this is quite important because it’s going to illustrate some formatting that we can do on charts, which is going to cover many different parts of a chart or graph. And this is the Format Chart Title dialogue, specifically aimed at the Chart Title and on here we can format the Fill, Border Color, Border Styles, Shadow, Glow and Soft Edges, and so on. And I’m going to demonstrate a couple of those now and then we’re going to be able to extend this into other areas of charting and graphing later on. Let’s just start with Fill. At the moment the Fill is set to Automatic and that will pretty much cover the style of chart that we’ve chosen. But we can change that into a non-automatic set of options. So, for instance, if I wanted to choose a Solid Fill, I could choose that here. I could choose a color, in fact there’s a yellow color there. You can see how that is all ready appearing in the title. So I can change that color. Let’s say I want to go for that color for my fill and then I can also change the Transparency, make it more transparent to show through. So, as you can see even with this straightforward example we have a lot of control over how that can appear. Similarly with Border, Border Color is automatic. I could for instance set the Border Color to a Solid Line. I could set the color to, say, a red color and again change the transparency. And then Border Styles, I can have a wider border. A 3 point border, you can see it getting thicker as I preview it there and then I can change Alignment, Soft Edges and so on. So we’re not finished working on that, I can pretty much format the Chart Title any way that I want.

And one other point to note before we move on is if you point at the Chart Title Area and right click, you get not only a Context Menu, but a mini Tool Bar here where you can actually format the text in the Title, choosing Font, Font Size and so on. And then if you click within the Context Menu on Format Chart Title, you bring up that same dialogue again.

And, in fact, amongst the other options on that Context Menu is this group here, which actually relate to the whole of the Chart Area. So if I, for instance, click on 3-D Rotation, I bring up the Format Chart Area dialogue that lets me make changes to the Chart Area itself. So, for instance, the 3-D Rotation one, if I actually reset that value now, you can see it’s affecting the whole of the Chart Area. And there are a number of options available there as well.

Okay, so we’ve looked quite a bit at the Chart Title and some of the ways of changing the layout and doing some more detailed formatting. Let’s now look at the second button in the Labels group, which is Axis Titles. Now, there are two axes. There’s the Primary Horizontal Axis and the Primary Vertical Axis. And both of them at the moment have the Default Titles of none. So, if I wanted to put on a Vertical Axis Title for a start. Let’s look at Rotated Title first. If I select that what happens is a title is added with a Default name of Axis Title and the text is actually rotated sideways and I can edit it that way or I can actually turn it around. But I’m going to leave it that way at the moment and edit that Axis Title.

Now, some people find it a little bit unnerving to type apparently on something that’s lying on its side like this, but in fact it’s no different to working on the Chart Title. When you’ve got the Axis Title selected, click again to change the shape of the border to a dash line, which means I can now just type. So, let me delete the word Axis. I’m just going to put in the word Dollars as well as Title at the moment. And that’s absolutely fine. If you find that a little bit unnerving what you can do is, if you don’t all ready have the Formula Bar shown in Excel, you can switch that on and you could actually type in the Formula Bar. I’ll just put the word Dollars and then click on the Axis Title and, in fact, Dollars appears as my Axis Title.

So, back to the Layout tab, Axis Titles, Primary Vertical Axis and I’m now going to put in Vertical Title instead of Rotated Title. Watch what happens to the Plot Area when I do this. The text now reads horizontally, although it’s arranged vertically and the Plot Area was resized to allow for that. Back again to Axis Titles, Primary Vertical Axis, I have the option of Horizontal Title. Again, watch what happens to the Plot Area and the Title when I do that. It now reads as Dollars horizontally with both the individual characters and the whole title arranged horizontally. And finally, as you can probably guess, if I again go Primary Vertical Axis, More Primary Vertical Axis Title Options, click there and I have a Format Axis Title dialogue where I can do things like Border, Fill, 3-D Formatting, Alignment changes, and so on.

So, finally in this section let’s look at the Horizontal Axis and do a couple of different things with that. What you can do to the two axes is pretty similar in terms of formatting. But if we look at the Primary Axis, example; let’s first of all put a Title below the Axis. I then click in there, change the Axis Title to Months, and then I’m going to go back to the same button and this time choose More Primary Horizontal Axis Title Options. It brings up the Format Axis Title dialogue, and just quickly for Fill; I’m going to make it Solid Fill. Border Color, I’m going to say it has a Solid Line. Border Styles, I’m going to give it quite a wide Border and, of course, as I’m doing this you can see it all happening in the chart itself. Give it a 3 point Border. And now this time I’m going to say Shadow. Yes, let’s give it one of the Shadow presets; perhaps, that one. Note the affect. Glow and Soft Edges, yes, let’s give it one of the presets; what about that one. And then 3-D Format, I can give it a bevel effect and so on. So there’s a whole range of options there that I can use on Titles, Chart Titles, and so on. It’s best really if you experiment with these. It would take me quite a lot of time to go through all of them, but you know how to access them now and you’ve got a general idea of what each of them does. In the next section, we’re going to carry on looking at the Layout tab. We’re going to look at formatting the Legend and so on. I’ll see you then.

Simon Calder

Chris “Simon” Calder was working as a Project Manager in IT for one of Los Angeles’ most prestigious cultural institutions, LACMA.He taught himself to use Microsoft Project from a giant textbook and hated every moment of it. Online learning was in its infancy then, but he spotted an opportunity and made an online MS Project course - the rest, as they say, is history!