Microsoft Office

Part III
Creating Charts and Graphics
Exporting a Graphic
If you create a graphic in Excel using Shapes, SmartArt, or WordArt, you may want to save the graphic as a
separate file for use in another program. Unfortunately, Excel doesn’t provide a direct way to export a
graphic, but here’s a trick you can use. Make sure that your graphic appears the way you want it and then follow
these steps:
1. Save your workbook.
2. Choose Office ➪ Save As to save your workbook as a Web Page. In the Save As dialog box, select
Web Page (*.htm; *.html) from the Save As Type drop-down list.
3. Close the workbook.
4. Use Windows Explorer to locate the HTML file you saved in Step 2. You’ll notice that Excel also
created a companion directory for the HTML file. If you save the file as myart.htm, the directory
will be named myart_files.
5. Open the directory, and you’ll find *.png graphic files — one for each graphic object in your
workbook. The *.png files have a transparent background.
Using SmartArt
Excel’s Shapes are certainly impressive, but the SmartArt feature is downright amazing. Using SmartArt, you
can insert a wide variety of highly customizable diagrams into a worksheet, and you can change the overall
look of the diagram with a few mouse clicks. This Office 2007 feature is probably more useful for
PowerPoint users, but I think many Excel users will find a need for SmartArt.
NEW FEATURE
SmartArt is new to Excel 2007.
Inserting SmartArt
To insert SmartArt into a worksheet, choose Insert ➪ SmartArt. Excel displays the dialog box shown in
Figure 22.6. The diagrams are arranged in categories along the left. When you find one that looks appropriate,
click it for a larger view in the panel on the right, which also provides some usage tips. Click OK to
insert the graphic.
NOTE
Don’t be concerned about the number of elements in the SmartArt graphics. You can customize
the SmartArt to display the number of elements you need.
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