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Chart Types.
Microsoft Excel offers a wide selection of chart types and sub types, to help
you use your data to get your point across. There are over a dozen standard
chart types, each with several subtypes. In a previous article, Scatter
Chart or Line Chart?, I discuss the similarities and differences between
two frequently confused types. Excel also offers twenty built-in custom types,
many of which are called "Combination Charts," because they combine different
types in the same chart. This article describes chart types in Excel, and shows
you how to select and modify built in chart types and how to create your own
combination charts and custom chart types.
Applying a Chart Type to a New Chart.
Select your data and click the Chart Wizard button on the Standard toolbar
(or choose Chart... from the Insert menu. The first step of the
Chart Wizard is the Chart Type dialog. The default chart type (a Clustered
Column chart, if you've never specified another default type) is selected.
Note the list of chart types in the left side of the dialog, the thumbnails
of subtypes in the right, and below the subtypes, a description of the selected
subtype. Click on the Press and hold to view sample button to see a
thumbnail of your chart formatted as the selected chart subtype. Select a chart
type and subtype, and click Next to continue with the rest of the wizard.
Changing an Existing Chart's Chart Type.
You can easily change the chart type of an existing chart. Select the chart
and select Chart Type... from the Edit menu, or right click on
the chart and select Chart Type... from the pop up menu. The chart's
type is selected (in this case, an XY Scatter chart with lines but no markers).
Select a different type or subtype, and click OK.
The Default Chart Type.
As mentioned above, the Clustered Column chart type is the default type applied
to any chart created in Excel. To select a different chart type for the default,
activate any chart, and select Chart Type... from the Edit menu,
or right click on the chart and select Chart Type... from the pop up
menu. Select the chart type you want to designate as the default type, and
click on the Set as default chart button at the bottom of the dialog.
Custom (Combination) Chart Types.
According to everyone's favorite paper clip, Excel offers custom chart types.
To access the "Built-In Custom" (my favorite oxymoron) chart types, click
on the Custom Types tab in the Chart Types dialog. These are
the famous Combination Charts, which combine different chart types in the same
chart. The current chart is displayed in the thumbnail as if its data were
formatted according to the selected custom chart type (a Line-Column type in
this picture).
There are quite a few custom combination charts to choose from, but you are
not limited to these if you need a different combination. The easiest way to
create a particular chart type is to make your chart with all data as a single
chart type, then change selected series. The Chart Type command works
with a single series as well as with the entire chart. For example, to make
a Column-Line chart, start with a standard line chart.
To change series Beta to a column, select it and choose Chart Type... from
the Chart menu, or right click on it and choose Chart Type... from
the pop up menu. Select the column type in the dialog.
Creating a Custom Chart Type.
Suppose you've made a chart with custom formatting, and you'd like to use
this formatting with other charts. You can create and save a custom chart type
so that it can be applied to any chart. Start with your optimally formatted
chart.
Select the chart and select Chart Type... from the Edit menu,
or right click on the chart and select Chart Type... from the pop up
menu. Click on the Custom Types tab, and choose the User-Defined option
below the list of chart types.
Click the Add button, then fill in a name and description for your
chart.
After you press OK, notice that the chart's name appears in the list
of user-defined custom chart types, and when this type is selected, the description
you entered is displayed below the thumbnail. To make this the default chart
type, click on the Set as default chart button. Use the Delete button
to remove a user-defined chart type.
| Copy Chart Formatting
If you don't need or want to define a custom chart type, you can still
copy chart formatting from chart to chart. Select the chart with the
formatting you want to copy (make sure its chart area is selected), and
copy it. Select the chart that you want to format, and select Paste
Special... from the Edit menu, and select the Formats option.
Unfortunately, pasting one chart's formats onto another chart also pastes
the text of the chart title and axis titles onto the titles of the other
chart, as described below. |
Drawback to Applying a Chart Type.
When you define a chart as a custom chart type, all the formats from the chart
are stored. But the chart type also stores the chart title and axis titles,
text as well as font formats. When the chart type is applied to another chart,
the font formats are applied to your titles, but the text in the chart type
overwrites the text of your titles. This also occurs when one chart's formats
are pasted onto another chart. The actual text of the title is part of the
properties of the title in VBA, but it would have made more sense to me to
treat the text of the titles as data of the chart, not formatting of the chart
type.
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