Microsoft Powerpoint 2007 Bible

In the following sections, you learn about chart formatting. There is so much that you can do to a chart that this subject could easily take up its own chapter! For example, just like any other object, you can resize a chart. You can also change the fonts, change the colors and shading of bars, lines, or pie slices, use different background colors, change the 3-D angle, and much more.

Clearing Manually Applied Formatting

PowerPoint uses Format dialog boxes that are related to the various parts of the chart. These dialog boxes are nonmodal, which means that they can stay open indefinitely, that their changes are applied immediately, and that you don't have to close the dialog box to continue working on the document. Although this is handy, it is all too easy to make an unintended formatting change.

To clear the formatting that is applied to a chart element, select it and then, on the Format tab, click Reset to Match Style. This strips off the manually applied formatting from that element, returning it to whatever appearance is specified by the chart style that you have applied.

Formatting Titles and Labels

Once you add a title or label to your chart, you can change its size, attributes, colors, and font. Just right-click the title that you want to format and choose Format Chart Title (or whatever kind of title it is; for example, an axis label is called Axis Title). The Format Chart Title (or Format Axis Title) dialog box appears.

The categories in this dialog box vary, depending on the type of text that you are formatting, but the following categories are generally available:

• Fill: You can choose No Fill, Solid Fill, Gradient Fill, Picture or Text Fill, or Automatic. When you select Automatic, the color changes to contrast with the background color specified by the theme.

• Border Color: You can choose No Line, Solid Line, or Automatic. When you select Automatic, the color changes to contrast with the background color specified by the theme.

• Border Styles: You can set a width, a compound type (that is, a line made up of multiple lines), and a dash type.

• Shadow: You can apply a preset shadow in any color you want, or you can fine-tune the shadow in terms of transparency, size, angle, and so on. You might need to apply a fill to the box in order for the shadow to appear. This shadow is for the text box, not for the text within it; use the Font group on the Home tab to apply the text shadow, or the shadows available for WordArt.

• 3-D Format: You can define 3-D settings for the text box, such as Bevel, Depth, Contour, and Surface.

• Alignment: You can set vertical and horizontal alignment, angle, and text direction, as well as control AutoFit settings for some types of text.

From the Home tab or the mini toolbar, you can also choose all of the text effects that you learned about earlier in this book, such as font, size, font style, underline, color, alignment, and so on.

Applying Chart Styles

Chart styles are presets that you can apply to charts in order to add colors, backgrounds, and fill styles. The Chart Styles gallery, shown in Figure 14.30, is located on the Chart Tools Design tab, which appears when you select a chart.

Figure 14.30: You can apply a chart style using the Chart Styles gallery.

Chart styles are based on the themes and color schemes in the PowerPoint Design tab. When you change the theme or the colors, the chart style choices also change.

Formatting the Chart Area

Your next task is to format the big picture: the chart area. The chart area is the big frame that contains the chart and all of its elements: the legend, the data series, the data table, the titles, and so on.

The Format Chart Area dialog box has many of the same categories as for text boxes-such as fill, border color, border styles, shadow, and 3-D format-and it also adds 3-D rotation if you are working with a 3-D chart. You can choose to rotate and tilt the entire chart, just as you did with drawn shapes earlier in this book.

Formatting the Legend

When you use a multi-series chart, the value of the legend is obvious-it tells you which colors represent which series. Without the legend, your audience will not know what the various bars or lines mean. You can do all of the same formatting for a legend that you can for other chart elements. Just right-click the legend, choose Format Legend from the shortcut menu, and then use the tabs in the Format Legend dialog box to make your modifications. The available categories are Fill, Border Color, Border Styles, and Shadow, as well as the Legend options mentioned earlier in this chapter.

Formatting Gridlines and Walls

Gridlines help the reader's eyes move across the chart. Gridlines are related to the axes, which you learned about earlier in this chapter. Although both vertical and horizontal gridlines are available, most people use only horizontal ones. Walls are nothing more than the space between the gridlines, formatted in a different color than the plot area. You can set the Walls fill to None to hide them. (Don't you wish tearing down walls was always that easy?) You can also use the Chart Wall and Chart Floor buttons on the Layout tab.

In most cases, the default gridlines that PowerPoint adds work well. However, you may want to make the lines thicker or a different color, or turn them off altogether.

Gridline presets are available from the Gridlines drop-down menu on the Layout tab. There are separate submenus for vertical and horizontal gridlines, as shown in Figure 14. 31. You can also choose the More command for either of the gridlines submenus for additional options.

Figure 14.31: You can apply gridline presets from the Gridlines drop-down menu.

To change the gridline formatting, right-click a gridline and choose Format Major Gridlines. You can then adjust the line color, line style, and shadow from the Format Major Gridlines dialog box, as shown in Figure 14.32.

Figure 14.32: You can set gridline colors, styles, and shadows in the Format Major Gridlines dialog box.

Formatting the Data Series

To format a data series, just right-click the bar, slice, or chart element, and choose Format Data Series from the shortcut menu. Then, depending on your chart type, different tabs appear that you can use to modify the series appearance. Here are the ones for bar and column charts, for example:

• Series Options: This tab contains options that are specific to the selected chart type. For example, when working with a 3-D bar or column chart, the series options include Gap Depth and Gap Width, which determine the thickness and depth of the bars. For a pie chart, you can set the rotation angle for the first slice, as well as whether a slice is "exploded" or not.

• Shape: For charts involving bars and columns, you can choose a shape option such as Box, Full Pyramid, Partial Pyramid, Cylinder, Full Cone, or Partial Cone. The partial options truncate the top part of the shape when it is less than the largest value in the chart.

• Fill: You can choose a fill, including solid, gradient, or picture/texture.

• Border Color: The border is the line around the shape. You can set it to a solid line, no line, or Automatic (that is, based on the theme).

• Border Styles: The only option available on this tab for most chart types is Width, which controls the thickness of the border. For line charts, you can set arrow options and other line attributes.

• Shadow: You can add shadows to the data series bars or other shapes, just as you would add shadows to anything else.

• 3-D Format: These settings control the contours, surfaces, and beveling for 3D data series.

Other chart types have very different categories available. For example, a line chart has Marker Options, Marker Fill, Line Color, Line Style, Marker Line Color, and Marker Line Style, in addition to the generic Series Options, Shadow, and 3-D Format categories.