Formatting Text on a Chart

Though charts are primarily graphic objects, every chart contains plenty of text in the form of a chart title, axis labels, and a legend. Even though the chart obtains its raw data (including text) from the worksheet, the chart itself controls the appearance of this text, and you can change the text appearance without affecting the appearance of your worksheet data.

Before formatting text on a chart, be aware that all entries that appear within an object on the chart use the same text formatting. For example, if you change the font for the legend, all entries in the legend appear in the same font. You can't change one legend entry without changing all of them.

To change the appearance of text on a chart, follow these steps:

1. Double-click the text whose appearance you want to change. You can change the appearance of the chart title, axis labels, or legend. The Format dialog box for the selected object appears.

2. Click the Font tab. The font options appear, as shown in Figure 8.6.

   Figure 8.6. The Font options control the appearance of the text.

   

3. Use the font options to specify the desired font, text size, color , enhancements (such as bold and italic), and other text attributes.

4. If you are formatting text for axis labels, you can lean the text to provide additional room for the labels (so they don't overlap). Click the Alignment tab and enter your preferences. (The Alignment tab does not appear in the Format dialog box for all chart objects.)

5. When you're finished entering preferences, click OK .