

The next decision you have to make is what type of chart you want. If you ever forget and you end up with a weird chart, it’s probably because of this! But don’t worry, you can change the data once you’ve created the chart – we’ll look at how shortly. In the second image, A1 has been selected, which means the two ranges are now the same width. Because A1 hasn’t been selected, the first range (B1:C1) is only two columns wide whereas the second range (A3:C4) is three columns wide. In these two images below, much the same thing applies. Make sure they’re the same, even if A1 is completely blank. In column A, it’s only four rows, but in Column B it’s five rows. Examine these examples below:Ĭan you see that in the top image, A1 hasn’t been selected? That means that the ‘height’ of the two ranges isn’t the same. It’s worth noting that if you need to select only a portion of the data, the ‘height’ and ‘width’ have to be the same for each section you pick.

To select all: click somewhere in the data.In the above example, I could include both years if I were making a bar/column but I would not be able to use a pie chart unless I decided to show just the 2016 data or just the 2017 data. You have a choice: all of your data, or some of it. So just save yourself the faff and get into the habit of never having blank rows and columns.
#Excel trendline splitting at a certain point download
This is only really applicable if the chart is being used in a report outside of its originating spreadsheet but people should still be able to inspect the raw data should they wish.Īll these features and instructions are covered in this PowerPoint file – please remember to download it to view, otherwise it won’t animate.įirstly, and most fundamentally, ensure that all your data is contiguous: that is, all in a block with no gaps or rows/columns missing.Īside from the gross insult to data integrity by having blank rows and columns willy-nilly, you’ll make Excel get ever so confused and you’ll have to work harder to get it to do what you want it to. Are your numbers tonnes or milligrams? Percentages? Are we looking at pounds or thousands of pounds? Is this data over a week or over a decade? Are we talking how many chickens crossed the road here, or something a little more useful?


Saving your spreadsheets into other file formats.Merging cells, wrapping text, cell alignment and super/subscript.
