Excel Hacks, 2nd Edition

Chapter 5. Charting Hacks

Hacks 55–72

Charts are one of Excel’s most popular features, giving spreadsheets visual power beyond mere calculations. Although Excel’s chart capabilities are impressive, many times you’ll want to go beyond the basic functionality provided by the software’s built-in Chart Gallery to create charts that are more responsive to changes in data, or you simply will want to go beyond the range of options Excel most obviously provides. The hacks in this chapter enable you to do all of this and more.

Explode a Single Slice from a Pie Chart

Although pie charts are excellent visual aids, sometimes you want to emphasize a particular piece of the pie. Separating it from the rest gives it more attention.

The default option on an exploded pie chart is to explode all the slices simultaneously and for the same distance. With a couple of mouse clicks, you can explode one slice at a time.

To begin, set up a basic pie chart such as the one shown in Figure 5-1.

Next, click the pie chart once to select it, and then click again on the slice you want to explode. Drag the selected slice of pie away from the center of the chart, and you will see the exploded effect shown in Figure 5-2.

Dragging the single slice will leave the other slices unaffected. You can repeat this for other slices if you want. This technique also works just as well with a 3D pie, although the size of the pie chart ...