Printing a Chart

When you have finished creating attractive charts, you'll most certainly want to print them. Printing charts is not much different from printing worksheets, but you have a few extra options available. If you're using a black-and-white printer, you'll want to examine your chart in Print Preview to verify that its colors have been properly converted to grayscale shading. If you're printing an embedded chart, you have the option of printing the chart with or without the worksheet data around it.

To double-check chart colors in Print Preview, follow these steps:

1. Display the chart that you want to print, and then click the Print Preview button on the Standard toolbar.



2. Verify the chart shading— you should be able to distinguish one shade of gray from another. (If you're using a color printer, of course, you'll see everything in color.)
3. Click Close to exit Print Preview.
4. If you're not happy with the shading, double-click the chart piece you want to change and specify a new color or pattern on the Patterns tab of the Format Data Series dialog box. Excel gives you complete control over the colors and shading patterns used in your charts and legends, so that you can adjust them if necessary.

To print a chart, follow these steps:

1. Display the chart that you want to print, either as a stand-alone chart sheet or as an embedded chart in the worksheet.
2. If you want to print an embedded chart only, and not the surrounding worksheet data as well, click the chart first.
3. Choose Print from the File menu to open the Print dialog box.
4. Specify the print options that you want, and then click OK to send your chart to the printer.

TIP

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Print Your Chart as "What You Get Is What You See"

By default, Excel prints a chart on an entire page. If you want your printed chart to be the same size as the chart in your worksheet, choose Page Setup from the File menu, click the Chart tab, and then select the Custom option before printing. This option tells Excel to render the chart on paper exactly as it appears in your worksheet.