Procedure for Making a Simple Graph

Create the simple graph.

1. Open up Microsoft Excel.
2. Put cursor in cell A1, click and type the title and students name. Press "enter" when finished.
3. Begin in cell A5, and moving down the column "A," enter the colors or the name for each of the items being graphed.
4. Begin in cell B5, and moving down the column "B," enter the numbers (or data) that goes with each of the items being graphed.
5. When finished, highlight data by clicking in cell A5, holding the clicker down, and dragging the mouse until all names and numbers have been highlighted. Let up on your mouse clicker.
6. Go to the button for charts and click it. A dialog box will pop up.
7. Stay with a column type chart, and have the students pick the chart sub-type they want.
8. To see a preview, click a sub-type, and click the bar which says "Press and hold to view sample."
9. Click "Next" and get a preview of the data.
10. Click "next" again.
11. Click the tab labeled "Legend", and Unclick "Show Legend".
12. Click the tab labeled "Titles" and type in the title of the chart again. After a split second, the title will appear on the preview.
13. Click "finish."
14. Be sure that the graph data is readable. Sometimes the 3-D charts don't come out correctly. If it doesn't come out readable, click the chart once so it is "selected" and click "Chart" "Chart type" to select another type of graph.
15. To resize the graph, select the graph, put mouse arrow over a small square box appearing on the edges of the graph, click down when your mouse arrow turns into a double sided skinny arrow, and drag the chart to a larger size.

Customize the bars, backgrounds and text.

1. Click once on one of the bars. All bars will have a dot in them.
2. Keeping mouse over one of the dots, RIGHT click. A menu will pop up. Or, student can click "Format" on the menu bar.
3. Click the option "Format Data Series," using a normal left click.
4. At this point, a different color may be selected for the bars, if desired. However, other more interesting choices exist.
5. Click the bar with the words "Fill Effects."
6. Experiment with the following choices:

• One color. Choose color and mix with light and dark. Try different shading styles.
• Try the same thing with two colors. Again, try different shading styles.
• Click "preset" and look through all the multi colored sets, and see how they differ with different shading styles.
• Click the tab entitled "Texture." More texture choices can be downloaded from the Internet and access on hard drive by clicking "Other texture."
• Click the tab entitled "Pattern" and look at the different patterns of two colors that can be made.
• Click the tab entitled picture. Any graphic can be inserted from the bar "Select Picture" and used in the bars.

8. If a bar is clicked a second time in step 2, then only that bar can be selected. Then steps 2-6 can be repeated separately for each bar in the graph, resulting in bars that are all different colors!
9. When a color/pattern has been selected for the bars of the chart, carefully click one time gray background called the plot area. Using the steps above, customize the plot area. When right clicking, "Format Plot Area" will be on the pop up menu, and that should be selected.
10. Finally, do the same for "chart area", by carefully clicking one time the area close to the edge of the chart graphic.
11. All text can be double clicked to get a dialog box of text choices: font, color, size, etc.