How to make cool graphs with Excel 2010

As requested, Graphs about graphs! A step by step guide to making a basic graph and more using Microsoft Excel 2010. This will work better if you go ahead and open Microsoft Excel 2010 now and work along with the blog; should only take a few minutes. First things first, decide what your variables are, your X and Y if you will.

If there are more than 2 variables such as, 1.name 2. quantity and 3.fact we will discuss 3d graphs later. For now I will set up two basic rows one with the names of graphs and the other with a number 1-10 describing how well I favor them individually.I use the top row to label and use no special tools of formulas at all. There is no limit to how many items you can list in the spread sheet so if you'd like to list all your favorite foods and grade them by calories then graph all 2500 of them go for it. I am just choosing the 10 types of graphs listen in the insert tab. which leads me to my next task.

Place your mouse cursor over the center of the first cell in the data, or (A1) top left with the words "Types of Graphs"; right click and drag it to the bottom right cell (B10) with the number 4 representing how I feel about radar graphs on a scale of 1-10. This should have highlighted your data and you are now ready to make your graph appear out of no where completely effortlessly. In the picture below I have number labeled these steps so follow along. 1. after highlighting your data select the insert tab. 2. you will see a assortment of graphs just click on the one you want and it will give you more options as to what style. In this case I select pie graphs and then as step 3. I choose which version of the graph I would like I.E. the 2-D version.

After following those steps a graph should have appeared, like I said, effortlessly and in most cases this alone is enough. I am not one to settle for just a graph though so I will be choosing more options to spice it up. Most people beat them selves up when making a graph about changing the title name, it is originally named what ever you have in the second column as the title. All you have to do is double click on the title and the cursor will appear in the window where you may edit the text at your freewill.

This graph probably doesn't look like a typical professional graph you would see on a meme or reddit joke about statistical nonsense and that is easily changed. As long as the graph is selected ,you have a design tab that gives you several options to cusomize your graph with. Most commonly you will want to put your %'s in side the pie pieces like in the picture below. Just follow the arrows.

Lets take a step back and return to when you were picking what type of graph you wanted. Lets say you chose pie then saw the option for 3d and shose that instead but now you are thinking, it still looks 2D? If you did not do this already go ahead and slect the graph, go back to the insert tab, select pie and 3d and it will automatically replace the present one. Now with the graph still selected your graph tabs should still be open. Next to your design tab is the layout tab. Click on the layout tab and find the 3D rotation icon. It is actually labeled 3D rotation.. This opens a dialogue box and probably looks confusing.. The arrow buttons next to the X and Y axis labels are what control the movement of your graph; go ahead and press up on either of the arrows. You will notice the X axis makes the graph spin and the Y axis brings the graph to a much more 3D state.

Now to get into the more advanced stuff. Don't be fooled; it doesn't get any harder just hold on! You can actually control the individual pie pieces by double clicking on one. Be care full because if you click too slow it will just select the whole graph and things will get messy, but if you mess up just hit Ctrl-Z and it will be fine. A dialogue box will open just close it and ignore it for now. Go ahead and select one then click and drag it away from the pie graph. Doing this will not completely separate the piece even though it visually is separated, in other words, you can still rotate the graph and the piece will rotate along the same axis, and it is simple to drag the piece back. If you selected the whole graph and draged it out ward you may have already noticed all the pieces can separate simultaneously and return just as well.

Now for what you have all been waiting for... How do I change the colors on my graph?! More importantly, how do I make it all green and still see the different pie pieces? There are a few ways of doing this, you can change the outline color to a darker green and the inner to a lighter one, or you can customize each one to a different shade of green like in the picture below. This is where you make use of that final graph tab that says format. double click on the pie piece you are changing and then under format select the "shape fill" option. There are only 5 shades of green and they are not very distinctive so after you have done a couple click on the more fill colors option and keep doing that till you have all the colors you want and where you want them.

Unfortunately this concludes the blog, I will touch back on this subject if there are any questions or if I want to blow your mind with 4D graphs!! But not today. Thanks for reading and please share my blogs if you like them, I am doing it for free where you'd normally pay a monthly subscription, so the more traffic the better. :)
-Roy Stanley