To do so, she’ll highlight all of the data (including column headers!) she wants included in her chart. With her data cleaned up, Lucy is ready to insert her chart into her spreadsheet. Go to the edit menu at the top of the page, and then type in the mistake you want to find and what it should be replaced with.įor example, if Lucy realized she spelled “September” as “Setpember” she could use this feature to replace all instances where it’s spelled incorrectly. If you spot an issue, use Excel’s “find and replace” feature to correct all instances of that error. TIP: Checking over data is pretty simple when you have a really small data set like Lucy, but it can become a little more cumbersome when you have hundreds or thousands of rows of data. In this case, it’s pretty straightforward: Lucy has a column header for the month and a column header for the number of email subscribers. You should also ensure that you have descriptive column headers for your data. Taking even just a little bit of time to check over your data could prevent you from having to go back and make changes after you see something off in your chart.

So, whatever errors you have there will also appear in your chart.

Remember, the charts you build within Excel are going to pull directly from your data set. Get your data readyīefore she dives right in with creating her chart, Lucy should take some time to scroll through her data and fix any errors that she spots-whether it’s a digit that looks off, a month spelled incorrectly, or something else. How to build an Excel chart: A step-by-step Excel chart tutorial 1. But, she really wants to make an impact-so, she’s going to use an Excel chart to display the subscriber growth she’s worked so hard for. Sure, the numbers themselves show impressive growth, and she could simply spit out those digits during her presentation.

She really wants to knock the presentation out of the park-because, when you boil it down, this information proves that she’s doing her job well.Ĭurrently, she has the total number of email subscribers for each month of 2017 in a simple Excel spreadsheet that looks like this: She has to deliver a presentation to her organization’s leadership team, where she’ll highlight the growth of email subscribers over the past 12 months. She works on the marketing team at her company and is primarily responsible for all of the email marketing campaigns. Growth in email subscribers: An Excel charts case study

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