Information system assignment

1. Here is the general approach to creating and modifying Excel graphs.

a. First highlight the data you are planning to graph. Then go to the “Charts” Group of the “Insert” tab, click on the type of chart you want, and then click on the subtype (i.e., the specific type of chart from a number of similar subtypes). The chart will appear.

b. Once a chart has been created, click on it (if it isn’t already selected) to modify it. The Chart Tools ribbon will appear. There are several ways to modify the chart, including the following:

a. You can use the “Design” tab to "Change the Chart Type," "Select Data," or "Add Chart Elements" such as a chart title, legend, data labels. and axis titles. You can also click on the "+" sign next to the chart to edit many of these chart elements.

b. You can select a piece of the chart and format it. How to select a piece is described in item 2 below. Once you have selected a portion of the chart you can right click on it to see a shortcut menu with the most common options for this part of a chart.

c. You can move or resize pieces of the chart by selecting them and then either dragging them with the mouse to move them or dragging their handles to resize them. When resizing an entire chart it is best to hold the "Shift" key while dragging a corner to avoid distorting the shape of the chart.

d. In many cases, if things go awry with your chart, it is probably easier to delete it and start again.

2. Selecting elements of a chart to format:

The way to think of an Excel chart is as a collection of pieces, each of which may itself be made up of many pieces. For example, a legend is a piece of a chart, but the legend itself will contain several pieces (one label for each data series). Similarly, the pie is part of a pie chart, but the pie comprises several slices. In a line chart, the chart consists of several lines and each line consists of several data points.

To select a part of a chart, click on it. "Handles" will appear on that piece of the chart. If that piece of the chart comprises smaller pieces, you can then click on one of those constituent pieces to select it. For example, suppose you want to select a pie slice. First click on the pie, then click on a slice. If you want to select a label in the legend, first click on the legend, then click on the label. If you want to select a data point, first click on line (data series) containing the data point, then click on the data point.

So, to format a piece of a piece of a chart, you can't just select it, first you select the piece that contains it, then you select it. Sometimes you have to look very closely at where the handles are to see what was selected. One way to be sure what was selected is to look in the name box near the top left of the spreadsheet, or the chart objects box at the left of the chart toolbar, which will tell you what piece of the chart has been selected. If you make a mistake when selecting and accidentally format something other than you planned, use the "undo" button.

4. When using charts, sometimes the various dialog boxes and toolbars that appear may block your view of the chart or spreadsheet. These boxes and toolbars are windows like any others. You can drag them to move them out of your way.

5. When creating a line or column chart, to label the X axis, click on “Select Data (available in several places). Then “Edit” the “Horizontal (Category) Axis Labels” and fill in the “Axis Label Range” box with the range of cells containing the labels (e.g., the years in the homework assignment).

6. IMPORTANT NOTE: Different types of charts are used for different purposes. For example, line charts show trends over time. Pie charts are generally used to show pieces of a whole—that is, each slice of the pie shows how big one component of the whole is. So pie charts are only meaningful if all the slices are positive and together all the slices add up to something meaningful.