This setting controls the default for all new charts in all workbooks. Note that hen you just randomly select cell in a set of data, Excel will try to plot all data. If you only want to plot one series, you can hold down the control key and select just that data. Then Excel will only plot the data you’ve selected. Once you have a chart, there are a number of shortcuts you can use. When you select a chart, you can use arrow keys to select various elements in the chart. The up and down arrow keys will select groups of elements. Groups have names like Chart Area, Plot Area, Legend, and so on. You can see the full list in a drop down on the ribbon. Once you have a group selected, the left and right arrow keys will select elements in that group. This is a useful way to select elements in a chart, because it can be difficult to click exactly what you want, especially smaller items. You can duplicate a chart, or any object, with Control D, and once you have more than one chart, you can use tab to move between them. Like other objects, you can hold down the Alt key (or command key on a Mac) to snap the chart to the cell grid. This is a great way to resize and align and multiple charts. Finally, because charts are objects, so you can use Control + 6 to hide and show all charts. And don’t forget that you can use Control 1 to format any element in a chart.
Dave Bruns
Hi - I’m Dave Bruns, and I run Exceljet with my wife, Lisa. Our goal is to help you work faster in Excel. We create short videos, and clear examples of formulas, functions, pivot tables, conditional formatting, and charts.
