Excel Charts

I liked this book a lot. The instructions are very easy to read as are all of Mr. Walkenbach's books. I own a few and I like them very much.

I've been using Excel to create charts for 20 years and thought I knew a lot about creating and modifying charts. I'm only on Chapter 4 and I've already learned a handful of very helpful hints and tips -- and this is just the chapters that cover the basics. I was planning to skip those chapters because I thought they wouldn't cover anything new. Instead I'm glad I didn't as there are a number of shortcuts I would have never known about. There are great examples and the CD lets you try out the options as they are discussed in the book.

One of the most helpful books I have ever used when battling with making the graphs look just the way I need them. It's amazing what you can do with the help of John's expertise.

I must often prepare simple visuals from complex data, aiming to communicate the message in the data at a glance from the audience. This book is an excellent reference for how to easily set up Excel charts to do just that. Chapter 8: Charting Techniques and Tricks is especially valuable and I refer to it all the time. I recommend this as a desktop reference for anyone who creates charts in Excel.

If your objective is to master the Charting feature of Excel, I bet that this book will exceed your expectations. Although most the material is advanced every user could benefit (The first Chapter offers a nice introduction to Excel Charts for novices). Knowledge of formulas and named formulas is necessary for certain examples in the second part of the book. You will be amazed of how many ways there are to customize and improve your charts, you will do things that you never thought possible in Excel. Excel's help file and other books in Excel will never give you the tricks and the work-arounds that you will learn from Walkenbach's book. Some of the most interesting Chart Techniques are : How to create combination Charts, how to Add a secondary axis, How to put several Charts on the same Chart Sheet. Scrolling charts, Self Expanding Charts. Adding Checkboxes to charts. Box plot and How to plot Mathematical Functions in Excel.I am sure that you will find many many more useful techniques.