A few tips for graphing with Excel:

1) When getting started with Excel, it can be helpful to work in one of the computer labs on campus because if you get in a jam another student sitting next to you will often have the answer to your problem.  You can also make an appointment with me to go over stuff. I can help!

2) After you make a graph, Excel has often guessed wrong about which columns of data you want to use for each line on your graph.  You often need to adjust how Excel decides which column of data is to be used for each line.  Pull down CHART select SOURCE DATA.  Highlight SERIES 1 and that shows you for the first “line” what Excel is using for the X and Y data.  In the X VALUES window, when the box says, “=Sheet1!$B$1:$B$8”, it means that column B in your data table is being used for the X values (and the values from row 1 to row 8 are being used).  You can add a new line by clicking on the ADD button and “Series 2” will be the second line on the graph and the boxes for X VALUES and Y VALUES needs to be filled in (most easily done by pasting the “Sheet1!$B$1:$B$8” from Series 1 and then changing the letters to be the column you want.

3) Once you have made a graph, to change the background color, double-click on the background and choose a color.  You can also double-click on other parts of the graph if you want to change them.

4) To add a Title and X/Y axes titles to a graph:
Pull down CHART and select OPTIONS

5) To add a trendline to a graph:
Double-click on one of the data points in your graph to highlight the data set, pull down CHART and select ADD TRENDLINE

6) To add error bars to a graph:
If your error bars are different for each data point on your graph, add a new column in the data table that has the standard deviation for each data point.  Then make highlight the data to make your graph but don’t highlight the standard deviation data.  Then get ready to paste in the “data range” into a window (or example, pull down CHART select SOURCE DATA and then copy the data range from the window) and then Pull down FORMAT and SELECTED DATA SERIES and X ERROR BAR and select CUSTOM, paste the same data range into the + and – window, and change the letters in the data range to correspond to the column of your table into which you typed the standard deviations.