Chapter 11. Graphing Data

11. Graphing Data

IN THIS CHAPTER

• Understanding chart types

• Creating a chart from spreadsheet data

• Formatting a chart for clarity

• Printing a chart

• Making changes to a chart

I know it sounds tired, but a picture really is worth a thousand words, especially if your "words" are really numbers you're trying to explain. Suppose that you have a year's worth of sales figures for three different products your company produces, and you want to compare the sales of the products over the year. If you try to make the comparison using raw data, you'll probably get a headache. But, if you chart those same numbers, you can easily understand what's happening.

In this chapter, I'll show you how to use the data in a Quattro Pro spreadsheet to quickly and easily create a variety of charts. Then, we'll spruce up those charts to make them truly meaningful and easy to read, and I'll show you how to print charts. Last, we'll explore what you need to do when you need to change an existing chart.