The charting system in Excel is flexible and deep.

Let’s take a look.

Here we have annual sales figures for a small company.

We’ll use this data to build a basic column chart.

The first step in creating a chart in Excel is to prepare the data.

First, go for the data you’d like to chart.

If your data includes totals, don’t include these in your selection.

All Excel charts have several variations.

For this example, we’re going to stick with a basic 2-D column.

When you select a chart option, Excel will immediately create a chart in that style.

With the chart selected, Excel highlights the cells used to create the chart on the worksheet.

You’ll see this highlighting only when the chart is selected.

And we can easily adjust to display all eight years again.

This is a good way to learn Excel’schart terminology.Excel charts are fully dynamic.

Any change you make to the chart data is immediately reflected in the chart.