Advanced Charting
There are a few more advanced options for creating unique charts. One that’s not too difficult is using an image as your bar in a bar chart. For the bar chart example we used the cost of pirate ships throughout the years. So we could use an image of a pirate ship instead of a plain colored bar. If you think your bar chart would look better with an image, find an image that you like and save it to the desktop. (Remember that you need permission to use copyrighted material. You can’t just take an image from Google.)
When you have a completed bar chart and it’s placed as an object within your work sheet, double click on one of your bars.
The Format Data Series dialog box should open up. Go to the Patterns tab.
Click on the Fill Effects… button below the color swatches.
The Fill Effects dialog box will open. Go to the Picture tab.
Click on the Select Picture… button.
Browse to your saved image and click Insert.
Click OK on the Fill Effects dialog box.
In the Format Data Series dialog box click on the Options tab. You should see a rough example of what your chart will look like.
One common problem with using an image as a Fill Effect is that the image will be too squished to actually see it. You can play around with the Gap Width to figure out what width bar will best show your image.
Once you’ve found a gap width that looks good, click OK in the Format Data Series dialog box.
Depending on the background color of your image, you may need to change the background color of your chart. For the example, the image of the pirate ship has a white background. The white background doesn’t look great with the grey background of the chart.
The chart looks better with a white background because it doesn’t make the images look choppy. There’s no set formula that makes every chart look good. Just make the adjustments that make your chart look good.
When you’ve created a chart that you’re happy with, move to the Cleaning Up Charts tutorial.