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Formatting Chart Elements

As you have been working with the various chart elements so far in this chapter, perhaps you have been a bit disappointed in the look of some of the items. Now it's your chance to fix that. In the following sections, you learn about chart formatting. There is so much you can do to a chart that the subject could easily take up a whole chapter by itself. You can resize a chart, just like any other object, and you can also change fonts, colors, shading, background, 3-D angles, and much more.

Formatting the Plot Area and Chart Area

The plot area is a smaller frame within the larger chart frame. Almost everything in the chart frame is also within the plot area-only the chart title lies outside of it. (On some 2-D charts the legend also lies outside it.)

Depending on what type of chart it is and what you've done to it in the way of modifications, the plot area might not take up an appropriate amount of space within the chart frame. Fortunately, you can select and resize it the same as any other object with selection handles.

The plot area may or may not have a border around it. If it doesn't, you'll need to locate the plot area's border so you can click it to select it. One method is to move the mouse pointer from the vertical axis slowly out toward the edge of the chart frame until a ScreenTip appears that says Plot Area. Then, click to select the plot area's frame, as shown in Figure 11-27. You can also use the drop-down list on the Standard toolbar to select a chart element.

Figure 11-27: Adjust the size of the plot area inside the chart frame. You can also apply a border and/or fill to it, if desired.

From there, you can use the selection handles to resize the plot area (which is limited by the outer frame of the chart area, of course.)

Once you've found the plot area, you can format it by adding a border and/or fill to it, the same as with any other object. (Use the Line and Fill tools on the Drawing toolbar, or right-click the plot area frame and choose Format Plot Area.) You can use fill effects, scheme colors, fixed colors, or any of the other line and fill options in PowerPoint.

Besides the plot area, there is also the chart area (that is, the space outside of the plot area but inside the chart frame). You can format it the same way as the plot area-with any fill and/or border desired. Selecting the chart area is handy for applying the same font formatting to all elements of a chart at once.

Formatting Walls and Gridlines

Any 3-D chart that can have gridlines can also have a wall. That includes Bar, Column, Area, Line, and so on, but not types like Pie or Doughnut. The wall is the area on which the gridlines appear. You can make the wall any color (or fill effect), or you can make it transparent so that the formatting of the plot area, chart area, or slide shows through.

The walls are formattable only on 3-D charts. To change the background behind a 2-D chart, apply the formatting to the plot area.

To format a chart's wall, right-click the wall and choose Format Walls. There is only one tab in the Format Walls dialog box: Patterns. Select a border and shading for the wall.

You saw earlier in the chapter how to turn major and minor gridlines on and off. You can format gridlines in the same way that you would format any other line-based objects. Just right-click a gridline and choose Format Gridline. Any changes you make affect all the gridlines of that type (for example, all horizontal major ones).

When you open the Format Gridlines dialog box, you see two tabs. One is for Scale, which is the same thing as the Scale settings for the axis that the gridline touches. Any changes made in one place are reflected in the other. The other is Patterns, and the controls there are the same as the controls for changing other chart parts. The only difference is that the None option is grayed out, because you can't turn gridlines off from here. You must turn them off through the Chart Options dialog box or with the gridlines buttons on the toolbar, or by right-clicking a gridline and choosing Clear.

Formatting Titles and Labels

As you learned earlier, you place titles and other labels on a chart through the Titles tab of the Chart Options dialog box (Chart⇨Chart Options).

Once you have the title or label on the chart, you can change its size, orientation, and font. Just right-click the title you want to format and choose Format Chart Title (or whatever kind of title it is; an axis's label is called Axis Title, for example). The Format dialog box appears for it.

There are three tabs in this dialog box: Patterns, Font, and Alignment. If you see only one tab (Font) in the dialog box, you have right-clicked the text itself rather than the text box. Close the dialog box and then click beside the text, rather than right on it, to select the text box. Then, right-click the text box's frame.

On the Patterns tab, shown in Figure 11-28, you can set a background color for the area behind the text. (Remember, all text sits in a text box on a slide, and each text box can have its own background formatting.) To place a border around the text box that contains the label, click the Custom option and then choose a line style, color, and weight. To use a background fill behind the text, click one of the colored squares in the Area part of the dialog box, or click the Fill Effects button to use fill effects such as gradients and textures.

Figure 11-28: The Patterns tab controls the text box in which the title or label sits.

On the Font tab, you can use all the usual text effects that you learned about earlier in the book: font, size, font style, underline, color, and so on (see Figure 11-29). You can also choose a background setting for your text in this box. If you set it to Transparent, whatever is behind the text box will show through as its background. If you choose Opaque, it will use its own color instead. The default is Opaque.

Figure 11-29: Use the Font tab to choose the typeface and its attributes.

The Auto Scale checkbox on the Font tab turns on/off the feature that resizes the text when you resize the text box or the chart area or plot area. It is on by default. You can turn this off if you want the text in the chart to be a certain size-for example, if you don't want the legend to automatically resize itself when you resize the plot area.

The Alignment tab controls the way the text is aligned in its text box. You can set both vertical and horizontal alignment, just like in table cells. However, vertical and horizontal alignments are usually a non-issue in a short label or title text box. The text box is exactly the right size to hold the text, so there is no way for the text to be aligned other than the way it is. Therefore, no matter what vertical and horizontal alignment you choose, the text looks pretty much the same. The only exception might be in a box with a long string of text.

The more useful alignment feature is the Orientation control. With it, you can rotate the text to any angle. For example, you can rotate the label for the vertical axis to run parallel to that axis (see Figure 11-30).

Figure 11-30: Change the text alignment and orientation on the Alignment tab.

By default, all text starts out formatted horizontally, at 0 degrees of tilt. (Exception: some Y-axis titles default to vertical.) But it doesn't have to stay that way; you can rotate it to any number of degrees from 1 to 359. (360 is a full circle, so 360 is the same as 0.) To rotate the text, drag the red diamond up or down in the Orientation area. The word Text rotates as you drag it. In Figure 11-30, it is dragged all the way to the top, resulting in text that runs straight up. You can also type an angle measurement (for example, 90) in the Degrees text box instead of dragging the red diamond, if you prefer.

Formatting the Legend

With a multi-series chart, the value of the legend is obvious-it tells you what colors represent which series. Without it, your audience won't know what the various bars or lines mean.

You can do all the same formatting for a legend that you can for other chart elements. Just right-click the legend, choose Format Legend, and then use the tabs in the Format Legend dialog box to make any of these modifications:

Change the background. Use the Area controls on the Patterns tab.

Change the border around the legend. Use the Border controls on the Patterns tab.

Change the font, font size, and attributes. Use the controls on the Font tab or use the drop-down lists and buttons on the Formatting toolbar.

If you select one of the individual keys in the legend and change its color, the color on the data series in the chart itself will change to match. This can be useful with stacked charts, especially where it's sometimes difficult to select the data series you want.

Changing Data Series and Data Point Options

The individual bars, pie slices, lines, or whatever shape you have chosen can be formatted on a chart too. Before we get started with that, however, it's important that you understand the distinction between a data series and a data point.

A data series is all the bars, columns, and so on of a certain color. For example, in Figure 11-31 there are three data series, one for each person listed in the legend. Each data series consists of three bars. A data point is an individual piece of data, represented by an individual bar in Figure 11-31.

Figure 11-31: Understand the difference between a data series and a data point.

You can format either a data series or a data point. When you click once on a bar, the entire data series becomes selected. You can tell because a small square appears on each bar in the series (for a 2-D chart) or the bar becomes highlighted at the corners (for a 3-D chart), and if you right-click, a Format Data Series command will appear on the shortcut menu. If you click again on one of the bars in the selected data series, that individual bar will become selected, and the right-click menu will have a Format Data Point command instead.

So select whichever you want, and then right-click and choose the Format command. In the dialog box that appears, choose the colors, shapes, and other settings as desired. The following sections explain the individual settings available for a data series; the options for an individual data point are similar.

CHOOSING SERIES PATTERNS AND COLORS

On the Patterns tab of the Format Data Series dialog box, you can choose a color or pattern for all the bars in that series. This is virtually identical to the Patterns tab you saw in Figure 11-28; the only difference is an Invert If Negative checkbox. This swaps the foreground and background colors if the number represented by the data point is negative. It applies to bars and columns.

The colors you choose here apply only to the particular data series you right-clicked if there is more than one series in your chart. That's because you will want to select the color for each series separately rather than having them all appear in the same color.

CONTROLLING THE BAR OR COLUMN SHAPE

On the Shape tab (see Figure 11-32), you can choose which shape you want the bars or columns to be. Why settle for an ordinary bar? Have some fun. Don't forget, however, that you don't want anything to distract from your message. Don't make each series in the chart a different bar shape, for example.

Figure 11-32: One the Shape tab, you can choose from among several bar and column shapes.

One of the coolest shapes is the sawed-off pyramid (number 3 in Figure 11-32). The highest data point is a full pyramid, but the shorter one looks like its top has been sawed off. Number 6 is the same effect but with a cone.

CONTROLLING DATA SERIES LABELS FOR AN INDIVIDUAL SERIES OR POINT

The Data Labels tab in the Format Series dialog box contains the same controls as the Data Labels tab in the Chart Options dialog box, except that they apply only to the one selected series or data point. You could use these, for example, to add data labels only for the series that you want to spotlight.

SETTING THE GAP AND DEPTH ON A BAR OR COLUMN CHART

The Options tab in the Format Data Series dialog box is different for different chart types. It contains options specific to that type. For example, Figure 11-33 shows the options for a 3-D column chart. You can set the gap size between bars and the overall chart depth.

Figure 11-33: The Options tab for column and bar charts enables you to set the gaps between bars.

SETTING THE ROTATION OF THE FIRST SLICE ON A PIE CHART

Figure 11-34 shows the Options tab for a pie chart. Here you can set the angle of the first slide, effectively rotating the slices so that any slice is in any position you want. This can be very handy if the data labels are all bunched up on a pie chart. By modifying the position of the first slice, you can rotate the pie so that the large slices are at the top or bottom, where there is less room for labels, and the smaller slices are on the sides, where there is more room.

Figure 11-34: The Options tab for pie charts enables you to specify the angle of the first slice.

There is also a Vary Colors by Slice checkbox on the Options tab for pie charts. Leave this checked. If you deselect it, all the slices will be the same color, and you won't be able to tell them apart without data labels.

Changing 3-D Effect Settings

Not all charts in Microsoft Graph turn out perfectly right away. The application can't anticipate how your data is going to look in the chart, so sometimes in a 3-D chart some of the data bars or lines are obscured by other, taller ones in front of them. For example, in Figure 11-35, the middle row's values are not visible because the front row is too tall. Modifying the 3-D settings makes the chart appear at a different angle and brings the obscured data points into view.

Figure 11-35: This chart could benefit from some 3-D setting changes to make the back rows more readable.

A quick way to tilt a chart differently is to drag a corner of the floor. To do this, point the mouse pointer at a corner of the floor so that a pop-up reads Corner. Then click and hold down the mouse button. The chart turns into a wireframe view of the chart. Drag, continuing to hold down the mouse button, to change the angle. Then release the mouse button to redisplay the chart.

You can also change the 3-D view with a dialog box, like this:

Choose Chart⇨3-D View.

In the 3-D View dialog box, click the buttons to change the view and then click Apply to try out the following settings:

Elevation buttons: Click to tilt the chart up and down, or enter a value in the Elevation text box.

Rotation buttons: Click to rotate the chart, or enter a value in the Rotation text box. When you rotate the chart so much that the walls are in the way, the walls move to the opposite side.

Auto Scaling: This maintains the aspect ratio of the chart, so when one dimension changes, the others do too. After turning this off, the Height box becomes available (see the following).

Right Angle Axes: This is similar to Auto Scaling; it forces the axes to remain at right angles to one another. Turning it off enables the Height box too, and it also brings the Perspective controls into view, shown in Figure 11-36.

Perspective buttons: Click these to tilt the 3-D perspective up or down, or enter a value in the Perspective text box.

Height: Enter a percentage of the base width to represent the height of the chart. The default is 100. A setting of less than 100 makes a short, squat chart, whereas a setting of more than 100 makes a taller, thinner chart. This is especially useful for 3-D pie charts that appear too thick.

Click OK. Figure 11-37 shows the chart from Figure 11-35 with 3-D settings applied to improve its readability.

Figure 11-36: Adjust the 3-D settings here. The Perspective controls appear only when the Right Angle Axes checkbox is unmarked.

Figure 11-37: Now each series is visible, thanks to some 3-D adjustments.