Here is a fairly annoying problem.
Imagine a chart showing both sales & customer data. Sales numbers are large and customer numbers are small. So when you make a chart with both of these, it looks something like below.
Now, usually to select the smaller, unreachable series, the steps I follow are,
- Select the chart
- Go to Chart Format ribbon and select the series name (as shown below)
But this is a long process with significant click tax.
Here is a simpler alternative. Use arrow keys to select the series you want.
Here is how it works:
- Select one the taller, more prominent series
- Press either up or down arrow keys few times to select the smaller series
- Done!
A quick demo of this feature.
So go ahead and use ’em arrow keys to select & format any element in your chart.
Bonus tip: How to know which arrow key to press?
- After selecting the taller series, look at formula bar.
- It should read something like this:
=SERIES(Sheet1!$B$5,Sheet1!$A$6:$A$17,Sheet1!$B$6:$B$17,1) - Notice the last parameter.
- If it is 1, that means the other series is 2 (or 3 …). So you press UP arrow to increment.
- If it is 2 (or 3…), that means the other series is 1. So you press DOWN arrow to decrement.
Bonus Bonus Tip: How to select any individual data points in the series?
Use LEFT or RIGHT arrow keys to select individual data points in a series. This is an easy way to add data labels or change color of one particular data point.
How do you select unreachable chart elements?
I admit. I have been using the chart format ribbon to select unreachable items until today. But once I realized that we can use arrow keys, I feel empowered. While I am not a keyboard shortcut fanatic, I do believe that if there is a faster way to do something with keyboard alone, we should embrace it.
What about you? How do you select chart items? Please share your tips in the comment section.
More tips: on formatting charts, on keyboard shortcuts and quick Excel tips.
8 Responses to “Introducing PHD Sparkline Maker – Dead Simple way to Create Excel Sparklines”
This looks like it could be very useful for a project I'm putting together right now, thank you so much. Quick & silly question, how do I copy & paste the sparkline as a picture?
Question answered. For anyone else:
Select chart>Hold Shift key & select Edit/Copy Picture>Paste
[...] more information about PHD Sparkline Maker, please read this article and to learn more about Sparklines, read this article from Microsoft Excel 2010 blog. Also there [...]
Am I right in thinking that the y-axis is set automatically by excel?
That makes it possible to get the column chart not to start at zero.
Andy - yes, it is currently set to 'auto', which defaults to a zero base for positive values, but you can change that by left-clicking the chart, then choosing (in Excel 2007):
"Chart Tools/Layout/Axes/Primary Vertical Axis/More Primary Vertical Axis Options"
PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT: When manually editing a chart's minimum/maximum axis values, PLEASE be sure there's a valid reason and that doing so won't skew the message shown by the data (e.g. by exaggerating differences). If in doubt, go back and read Tufte. (W.W.T.D.?)
[...] gridlines, axis, legend, titles, labels etc.) and resize it so that it fits nicely in a cell [example]. This is the easiest and cleanest way to get sparklines in earlier versions of excel. However this [...]
thanks for the work creating the template!!!!
looks good