Do you know that you collapse or expand excel charts? Don’t believe me? Me neither. When I first realized that we can collapse / expand charts without writing any macros or lengthy formulas, I couldn’t wait to share it with all of you. This is such a simple yet powerful trick. See it for yourself.
If you want to collapse / expand an excel chart like this, Just follow the below steps.
1. Place your data in rows
Place your data like this.
Make sure you have an empty column next to each series of data. You can also place your data in columns instead of rows. Also summary row (in our case – yearly total) is added and calculated using a formula.
2. Make charts and Position them in the extra column
Select data for each year and make one chart. Since the data is in rows, select a bar chart. Make sure you position the charts in blank columns. Remove any chart axis, grid lines etc if you feel like.
At this point our set up should look like this:
3. Now select the detail rows and Group them
Just select all the rows with detailed data (in our case, the monthly sale values) and group them.
To group rows, go to Data Ribbon > Group in Excel 2007+ or
Data Menu > Group and Outline > Group in Excel 2003. See the below to understand.
| Group Data – Excel 2003
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Group Data – Excel 2007+
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4. Finally Adjust Chart Positions so that when you Group the Chart Collapses
This is the tricky part. Depending on excel version, you need to carefully adjust the chart’s size and position (top, left) and data series gap so that when you press “collapse” button from grouping area on left, the chart also collapses neatly.
This step is very straight forward in Excel 2007, but in Excel 2003 it takes some patience. Once you finish it, the collapsible chart is ready.
Go ahead and show it off to your boss or colleague, just wow them.
Download Collapsible Excel Chart Template
Click here to download collapsible excel chart template. This file is tested in Excel 2007, but should work with some minor hitches in Excel 2003 as well.
Learn more:
Show one chart from many – the easiest excel dynamic chart trick
More excel dynamic chart – tutorials and templates
Where would you use Collapsible Charts?
Even though this technique is a bit shaky on earlier versions of excel, I find good uses for this in dashboard reports, financial models etc. where lots of data is the norm. You can also use incell charts instead of regular charts and this technique works just as well.
What about you? Where would you use this trick?
8 Responses to “Top 5 keyboard shortcuts for Excel Charts”
As far as I remember (checked, again, 2 minutes ago) in my "Excel 2013" in order to select various chart elements I need to use the Arrow keys and not the TAB key.
Practically, the TAB key does nothing (within a Chart).
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Michael (Micky) Avidan
Thanks for pointing this out. This is how I remember it too, but when I was recording the video yesterday, only TAB key worked. MS must have changed the keys in Excel 2016. I have edited the post to include both keys.
The key navigation on charts is different in 2016.
TAB cycles through a layer of objects (SHIFT+TAB cycles backwards)
ENTER move down a layer
ESC moves up a layer
So on a column chart with title/legend/data labels if you select the plotarea the TAB will go through Title > Legend > Plotarea.
ENTER at plotarea will then select Vertical axis. Tab will take you through
Horizontal axis > gridlines > Series > Horizontal Axis.
ENTER with series selected will then allow you to TAB through individual data points and data labels.
If you ENTER on datalabels you can TAB through each data label.
ALT + F1 : to create default chart
ALT+E S T = CTRL + ALT + V, T : I find that easier to remember
I second what Michael already said about TAB and arrow keys. I can't help but think if this is related to the "," or ";" as separator. I prefer to use the chart tools - layout- drop down box, anyway.
Got to be F11 for instant charting. Highlight your data , hit F11 and voila! ?
Ctrl+1 is the most important chart shortcut. In fact, it works for any Excel object: whatever is selected, Ctrl+1 opens the task pane or dialog to format that object.
Somewhere along the line, maybe when Excel 2016 came out, the arrow keys stopped working to cycle through the elements of a chart. But what works is holding Ctrl while clicking the arrow keys. I haven't gotten used to the Tab and other keys, but as long as Ctrl+Arrow works, I'm good.
And F4 used to be so helpful when formatting a lot of charts. But since Excel 2007 came out, it has been mostly useless. It used to remember a whole set of changes at once, so I get that the newer modeless dialogs make that impractical. But now it only seems to work with formatting of lines and borders, and maybe fills. I find myself writing a lot of VBA one-liners in the Immediate Window to handle these tedious formatting tasks.
after clicking on a chart, is there a shortcut key to copy it?
Thank you for the Alt E S T - tip. This is more than a time saver. Because of dynamic charts or de-activated external references to data when you make the charts, you often have empty charts that are otherwise impossible to format. So this shortcut helps adressing that. I will work with it more and see if there remain some obstacles.