To create a chart that contains the sales totals by name, first, highlight the cells from both columns that contain data (including headers), and follow the steps below. This action inserts an 8 column, 2-D chart into your worksheet. Select the chart and drag the resize handles to change the size. Or, drag the chart to move it to a different location in your worksheet. If you have multiple columns of data, such as the year of sales and dollar value of sales shown in the example above, you can change which bar represents each data series. To do this: From the Select Data Source dialog box, you can change how that bar represents the data in your worksheet in various ways.
Select Add to add a new data series (which will add a new column to your chart).Select Edit to change the data that each column in your bar chart represents.Select Remove to remove any column in your chart.Choose a Series and select the blue up or down arrows to change the column order.
Format the Column Chart
You can change how your column chart looks by setting number formatting for the axis values, changing the chart title, or changing bar colors.
Change chart title: Double-click the title and type the new text.Change axis number formatting: Right-click on the axis, select Format Axis, expand Number, and choose a number format from the Category drop-down list.Change bar color: Right-click on any bar, select Fill to open a drop-down list and choose any color you’d like for that series.
If you want to dig deeper into creating more complex graphs or charts in Excel 2013, make sure to read the Excel 2013 bar graph/column chart tutorial. You’ll start with the same two columns of data containing 8 data sets. Select both columns (including headers). These steps insert an 8 column, 2-D chart into your worksheet.
Format the Column Chart
You can change the way your column chart looks in Excel 2010 using the same steps as for Excel 2019, 2016, or 2013, but changing the bars’ color in your chart is slightly different. If you’d like to learn more advanced techniques to insert and format graphs and charts in Excel 2010, read the Excel 2010/2007 bar graph/chart tutorial.
