How many times you created a chart in Microsoft excel and formatted it for minutes (and sometimes hours) to reduce the eye-sore?
Well, I will tell you my answer, its 293049430493 times 😉
Worry not! for you can become a charting superman (or elastigirl) by using these 73 free designer quality chart templates in literally no time (well, almost)
These templates will take care of typical formatting activities like,
- Remove that ugly Grey color background from the chart
- Change the default grid line format from intrusive solid black to a duller shade of dotted Grey
- Adjust the fonts (to verdana in this case), remove annoying chart auto-font-scaling
- Move the legend to a meaningful location and adjust its size
- And, ofcouse, fix the colors
so that you, the user can focus on your data and not on “why in the world anyone would design a default format like this…”, so go ahead and unleash the charting pro in you.
Download the free MS Excel chart / graph templates
Click here to download the templates
If you are wondering how to use these templates, scroll all the way down the post 🙂
More Charting Resources
Excel Dashboards – Tutorials & Downloads
Free Excel Downloads
Charts and Graphs
Excel School – My Online Excel Classes
VBA Classes – My Online VBA Training Program
1. Bar / Column Chart Templates:
(29 of them)
2. Stacked Bar / Column Chart Templates:
(22 of them)
3. Pie Chart Templates:
(22 of them)
Even though I seldom use pie-charts (since they hide more than they show and all that) I know a lot of people do use them and hence here they are,
How to use these templates?
Learn more about using chart templates in excel
- Method 1 – Easy and Quick:
- Download the chart templates (download links at top and bottom of this post)
- Copy both the chart you wanted and the “data used” portion
- Paste in your workbook
- Change the values, remove columns (or add them if you wish)
- Modify formatting if needed
- Be careful now, as your boss may feel zealous for your charting skills
- Method 2: Slightly geeky but works like a charm!
- Download the chart templates (download links at top and bottom of this post)
- Select the chart you want, right click and select “Chart type” from the context menu
[note: for more detailed steps & how-to, look in the excel worksheets you have downloaded - In the dailog, go to “custom types” tab and select “User-defined” radio button (towards bottom left)
- Click on “Add…” button, and give your chart-template a name that you can remember
- When you are done, click ok, and the chart is now added to your user-defined-charts library
- In future, when you want to use the chart, simply click on charts icon on tool bar, and select the chart type as custom -> user defined ->your chart name
- Now, watch out as your charts start stealing eyeballs in the boardroom!
Finally we can say good bye to default chart formats and all the associated eyesore
Download the free MS Excel chart / graph templates
More Charting Resources
Excel Dashboards – Tutorials & Downloads
Free Excel Downloads
Charts and Graphs
Excel School – My Online Excel Classes
VBA Classes – My Online VBA Training Program
11 Responses to “Fix Incorrect Percentages with this Paste-Special Trick”
I've just taught yesterday to a colleague of mine how to convert amounts in local currency into another by pasting special the ROE.
great thing to know !!!
Chandoo - this is such a great trick and helps save time. If you don't use this shortcut, you have to take can create a formula where =(ref cell /100), copy that all the way down, covert it to a percentage and then copy/paste values to the original column. This does it all much faster. Nice job!
I was just asking peers yesterday if anyone know if an easy way to do this, I've been editing each cell and adding a % manually vs setting the cell to Percentage for months and just finally reached my wits end. What perfect timing! Thanks, great tip!
If it's just appearance you care about, another alternative is to use this custom number format:
0"%"
By adding the percent sign in quotes, it gets treated as text and won't do what you warned about here: "You can not just format the cells to % format either, excel shows 23 as 2300% then."
Dear Jon S. You are the reason I love the internet. 3 year old comments making my life easier.
Thank you.
Here is a quicker protocol.
Enter 10000% into the extra cell, copy this cell, select the range you need to convert to percentages, and use paste special > divide. Since the Paste > All option is selected, it not only divides by 10000% (i.e. 100), it also applies the % format to the cells being pasted on.
@Martin: That is another very good use of Divide / Multiply operations.
@Tony, @Jody: Thank you 🙂
@Jon S: Good one...
@Jon... now why didnt I think of that.. Excellent
Thank You so much. it is really helped me.
Big help...Thanks
Thanks. That really saved me a lot of time!
Is Show Formulas is turned on in the Formula Ribbon, it will stay in decimal form until that is turned off. Drove me batty for an hour until I just figured it out.