or Excel Charting Hacks # 2
Roughly 35-40% of my working time in office is spent with powerpoint. As one of my mentors said, powerpoint gives neither the power nor the point. Apart from writing truck loads of bullet points and using auto shapes, I also work alot with numbers and charts. Obviously I resort to excel for drawing the same, but over the last few months I have observed that, everytime I create a chart, I follow these steps mechanically,
- Adjust the font to Verdana or something
- Remove the chart background
- Format gridlines to something really dull and dotted
- Remove the outline border for individual bars / pies etc.
- Enable data labels, format them
- Change colors of the bars / pies to something pleasent to the eye
It take roughly 2-3 mins for each chart to do this, often it takes more time when I am working with lots of numbers. Now, that is a lot of time to waste on daily basis. So I have developed few “user-defined charts”. Whenever I create a chart I apply one of these templates and then touch it up based on the presentation template or need of the hour. This is saving me a quite a lot of time and might as well do it for you.
User Defined Charts in Excel:
UDCs is a very useful hidden feature in excel that saves a lot of time, easy to know and use and still lacks significant awareness. I think, excel is full of such things.
How to define “User Defined Chart”:
Once you have a chart formated to your need, you can add it user-defined charts list so that you can use it next time with a different set of data. To do that;
- Select the chart which you want to add to “user defined” list
- Click on menu options Chart->chart-type
- Go to Custom tab, select “user-defined” radio. Click on the add button and specify a title and description. (see the screenshots aside. Focus on the Red circles)
Now, for your use I have included all the 13 chart templates I have created in an excel. Download excel charting hacks # 2 and say NO to default charts forever. Remember, you have to add my charts to your computer by manually clicking on the Add button for every chart. Thats one time process though.
[Read more excel charting hacks]
11 Responses to “Use Alt+Enter to get multiple lines in a cell [spreadcheats]”
@Chandoo:
One more useful trick.......
In a column you have no. of data in rows and need to copy in the next row from the previous row, no need to go for the previous rows but entering Alt + down arrow, you will get the list of data, (in asending order), entered in the previous rows...
This is another great tip. I use this all the time to make sense of some *very* long formulas. As soon as the formula is debugged I remove the break.
Great tip Chandoo!
I use this feature often and it has even gotten the, "how did you do that" response.
Thanks!
@Ketan: Alt+down arrow is an awesome tip. I never knew it and now I am using it everyday.
@Jorge, Tony: Agree... 🙂
[...] Day 1: Insert Line Breaks in a Cell [...]
how can we merge a two sheet.
excellent idea. Chandoo you are genious
Hi chandoo,
I have used ctrl+enter to break the cell. But I did not get the result.
Please tell me how can i break the cell in multiple lines.
Hi, Ranveer,
Its not Ctrl+enter to break the cell, use Alt+Enter to make it happen.
hi Chandoo....
how we can use Alt+Enter in multiple rows at the same time please reply hurry i have lot of work and have no time and i m stuck in this. 🙁
Alt+J worked once 🙁
So I found another more reliable way:
=SUBSTITUTE(A2,CHAR(13),"")
Where A2 is the cell that contains the line breaks which the code for it is CHAR(13). It will replace it with whatever inside the ""