Microsoft Excel 
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THE CHARTING PROCESS 
 
 
 
 
  
 
Charts provide a way of seeing trends in the data 
in your worksheet. The charting feature in Excel 
is extremely flexible and powerful and allows you 
to create a wide range of charts from  
any of the Insert commands in the Charts group 
on the  
Inserting Charts 
The first step when creating a chart is to select the data from the worksheet that you want to chart. It is 
important to remember that the selected range (which can be either contiguous or non -contiguous), 
should include headings (e.g. names of months, countries, departments, etc). These become labels 
on the chart. Secondly, the selected range should not (normally) include totals as these are inserted 
automatically when a chart is created. 
The second step is to create a chart using the INSERT tab on the ribbon. You can choose a 
Recommended Chart where Excel analyses the selected data and suggests several possible chart 
layouts.  
Alternatively you can create the chart yourself from scratch by choosing one of the Insert commands 
in the Charts group. Charts that you create in Excel can be either embedded into a worksheet, or they 
can exist on their own sheets, known as chart sheets. 
Chart Sheets 
If you want to keep your 
chart separate from the data 
you can move the chart to 
its own sheet. Chart sheets 
make it easier and more 
convenient to work with your 
chart because you’ll see 
more of it on the screen – 
since the data is not there! 
Embedded Charts 
Charts that appear within a 
worksheet are known as 
embedded charts. A chart is 
really an object that sits on 
top of the worksheet – unlike 
numbers and letters, charts 
are not actually placed into 
worksheet cells.