Microsoft Office

Getting Started Making Charts 19
FIGURE 19.2
This line chart displays two data series.
Embedded charts
An embedded chart basically floats on top of a worksheet, on the worksheet’s draw layer. The charts shown
previously in this chapter are both embedded charts.
As with other drawing objects (such as Shapes or SmartArt), you can move an embedded chart, resize it,
change its proportions, adjust its borders, and perform other operations. Using embedded charts enables
you to print the chart next to the data that it uses.
To make any changes to the actual chart in an embedded chart object, you must click it to activate the chart.
When a chart is activated, Excel displays the Chart Tools context tab. The Ribbon provides many tools for
working with charts.
Chart sheets
When you create a chart on a chart sheet, the chart occupies the entire sheet. If you plan to print a chart on
a page by itself, using a chart sheet is often your better choice. If you have many charts to create, you may
want to create each one on a separate chart sheet to avoid cluttering your worksheet. This technique also
makes locating a particular chart easier because you can change the names of the chart sheets’ tabs to provide
a description of the chart that it contains.
The Excel Ribbon changes when a chart sheet is active, similar to the way it changes when you select an
embedded chart.
Excel displays a chart in a chart sheet in WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) mode: The printed
chart looks just like the image on the chart sheet. If the chart doesn’t fit in the window, you can use the
scroll bars to scroll it or adjust the zoom factor. You also can change its orientation (tall or wide) by using
Page Layout ➪ Page Setup ➪ Orientation.
If you create a chart on a chart sheet, you can easily convert it to an embedded chart. Choose Chart Tools ➪
Design ➪ Location ➪ Move Chart to display the Move Chart dialog box. Select the worksheet that will hold
the embedded chart from the As Object In drop-down box. Excel deletes the chart sheet and moves the
chart to the sheet that you specify. This operation also works in the opposite direction: You can select an
embedded chart and relocate it to a new chart sheet.
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