While creating a scatter chart, Don is trying to change the marker color in Excel 2007. This was relatively easy to find in Excel 2003. In Excel 2007, the equivalent dialog was split into several panes, but there is a much easier way to go. Episode 988 discusses the three charting tabs and shows you the solution.
This video is the podcast companion to the book, Learn Excel 97-2007 from MrExcel. Download a new two minute video every workday to learn one of the 377 tips from the book!
This video is the podcast companion to the book, Learn Excel 97-2007 from MrExcel. Download a new two minute video every workday to learn one of the 377 tips from the book!
Transcript of the video:
Where's it Wednesday?
That icon.
Used to be right there.
Hey, all right welcome back to the Mr. excel netcast.
It's another where is it Wednesday.
This question comes in from Don.
Don is trying to create charts in Excel 2007.
He has a nice Cluster Chart here.
Don is very frustrating says hey, this first series. It's red.
I'm trying to change it to black and he managed somehow to put a black outline around it, but I couldn't figure out how to change the whole marker to red and there's probably a couple ways to do this. The great trick here in Excel 2007.
You see that when you're in a chart you have three tabs Design, Layout and Format.
And these go from very general settings to very specific settings.
So, the things on the Design tab will affect the whole chart, things on the Layout Tab will affect specific things on the chart, and then if you want to get down to the very tiniest details, you're always going to head back to the Format tab is we're going to be able to find most of the things.
So, the first thing I wanna do is we have a series you're called CENTERS.
I'm going to come up to this drop down.
This drop down is the leftmost drop down in both the Format and the Layout tab and that will allow me to choose Series"CENTERS" And then once I have that selected all of the items here on the Formats tab are gonna to affect just that series.
So, simply Shape Fill come in and choose Black and we're good to go.
Now, I immediately came back here to the Format tab to start to look for this answer you could also go into Format Selection where the format dialog box is going to have something roughly similar to what we had in Excel 2003.
Where you can instead of using automatic go to built-in and you see the different marker styles here.
So, you could choose a marker style, and then come back to marker fill, change the fill color here and then line color, solid line And so on.
I bet the line color actually draws a line in so that's not what we want to do.
But certainly, getting in and changing them marker style is a way to go although frankly, if is not wanted to do, we just wanted to change the color.
The best thing to do is to come here choose the series and choose the fill charts, especially changed a lot in excel 2007.
One of the more frustrating things to try and find out how to do, what we could do easily in excel 2003.
It always took more steps in excel 2003, in excel 2007 you get a chart much more quickly, but then you need to figure out how to fix that chart.
Kind of a frustrating process all right.
Hey I want to thank you for stopping by.
See you next time for another netcast for MrExcel.
Where's it Wednesday?
Just used to be right there
That icon.
Used to be right there.
Hey, all right welcome back to the Mr. excel netcast.
It's another where is it Wednesday.
This question comes in from Don.
Don is trying to create charts in Excel 2007.
He has a nice Cluster Chart here.
Don is very frustrating says hey, this first series. It's red.
I'm trying to change it to black and he managed somehow to put a black outline around it, but I couldn't figure out how to change the whole marker to red and there's probably a couple ways to do this. The great trick here in Excel 2007.
You see that when you're in a chart you have three tabs Design, Layout and Format.
And these go from very general settings to very specific settings.
So, the things on the Design tab will affect the whole chart, things on the Layout Tab will affect specific things on the chart, and then if you want to get down to the very tiniest details, you're always going to head back to the Format tab is we're going to be able to find most of the things.
So, the first thing I wanna do is we have a series you're called CENTERS.
I'm going to come up to this drop down.
This drop down is the leftmost drop down in both the Format and the Layout tab and that will allow me to choose Series"CENTERS" And then once I have that selected all of the items here on the Formats tab are gonna to affect just that series.
So, simply Shape Fill come in and choose Black and we're good to go.
Now, I immediately came back here to the Format tab to start to look for this answer you could also go into Format Selection where the format dialog box is going to have something roughly similar to what we had in Excel 2003.
Where you can instead of using automatic go to built-in and you see the different marker styles here.
So, you could choose a marker style, and then come back to marker fill, change the fill color here and then line color, solid line And so on.
I bet the line color actually draws a line in so that's not what we want to do.
But certainly, getting in and changing them marker style is a way to go although frankly, if is not wanted to do, we just wanted to change the color.
The best thing to do is to come here choose the series and choose the fill charts, especially changed a lot in excel 2007.
One of the more frustrating things to try and find out how to do, what we could do easily in excel 2003.
It always took more steps in excel 2003, in excel 2007 you get a chart much more quickly, but then you need to figure out how to fix that chart.
Kind of a frustrating process all right.
Hey I want to thank you for stopping by.
See you next time for another netcast for MrExcel.
Where's it Wednesday?
Just used to be right there
