Excel Hacks

Chapter 5. Charting Hacks

Hacks #50-59

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 Wizard 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.

Figure 5-1. Simple pie chart set up from worksheet data

Next, click the pie chart and then slowly double-click 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.

Figure 5-2. Simple pie chart with exploding slice

Dragging ...