Charting has long been one of Excel’s least understood features. Sure, most people know that you can highlight a range of data and then insert a Chart from the Ribbon in Excel 2007 and Excel 2010 or from the Insert menu in Excel 2003 and prior. But what most users do not know is that those steps are not even necessary!
Building a chart in Excel requires nothing more than clicking in the range of data you wish to chart and pressing F11. Doing so causes Excel to chart the data range in your default chart style. For example, by first clicking in cell D4, shown in Figure 1, and pressing F11, Excel creates a chart of the data in the default chart style and does so on a separate worksheet, as shown in Figure 2. If you prefer for the chart to be on the same worksheet as the data, instead of pressing F11, press ALT + F1. Of course, in either case, once you have created the chart, you can customize to your particular needs to communicate your desired message.
For a video demonstration of this tip, please visit www.tinyurl.com/k2tips76.