Microsoft® Excel® 2010 Inside Out

Selecting Data for Your Chart

The first step in creating a chart is to select some data. If you’re plotting all the cells in a contiguous block of cells, you don’t have to select the entire block; select any cell within the block, and Excel knows what to do. If, on the other hand, you want to plot only certain rows and columns within the range, you need to select those rows and columns explicitly.

Under some conditions, it’s advantageous to set up your source data as a table (by selecting a cell within it and pressing Ctrl+T or Ctrl+L) before creating a chart from it:

• If you plot data in a table and subsequently add new rows or columns to the table, Excel automatically incorporates those rows or columns into the chart.

• If you want your chart to focus ...