Notes on Excel Diagrams
February 5, 2006

   Here is how in Excel one can change the standard formatting of a
Line  chart, to take away the boxes around it, get rid of the legend,
make the y-axis label read horizontally, and so forth. 


Chart Type:  Line (or Custom Type--Rasmusen)

Chart Options. Gridlines. Usually click on the boxes to delete all the
horizontal lines, but keep them if you think them useful.

Chart Options. Legend: Click on Show Legend to get rid of the ugly box
with the legend.

Chart Options. Titles. Here put a chart title and labels for the axes,
if appropriate. It might be better to add these in MS-Word instead.

Left-click the y-axis label and then right-click to Format Axis Title
and then pick the Alignment tab to make the label horizontal instead
of vertical.

Left-click   the x-axis. Then right-click it and choose Format Axis.
On the  Scale tab,  choose a good number of tick marks between the
labels, and a good number of categories between tick marks.  On the
Alignment Tab choose 0 degrees, to get the labels horizontal.

  You may wish to left-click each axis, right-click and choose Format
Axis, and on the Patterns tab, choose None for Tick Mark Labels. In
that case, you would add the labels in MS-Word, which allows more
flexibility.


 Left-click on the plot  and then right-click to get Format Data
Series.  In the Patterns tab, Check Custom under Marker, and then pick
the circle marker, and make it 3 pt in size.   Check None under Line
if you don't want a line connecting the dots. You may also wish to use
the Data Labels tab and Value to put the number value of each point
next to that point.

Right-click on the interior of the plot to get Format Plot Area. Pick
None for Border, and Automatic or None for Area (depending on whether
you want a grey fill interior or white).

 Once the chart is formatted correctly, right-click on the chart, pick
Chart Type, check User-Defined, and click on Add. You can then save
the formatting style of the chart for future use.

 Something you can't put in a User-Defined chart is not to have a box
border around the entire graph. For that, you need to right-click on
that box and choose Format Chart Area and under Border pick None. Only
then should you cut and paste the graph into Word, or  into Paint or
Powerpoint (which you need to do if you want to save the chart as a
separate *bmp or *.jpg file).