Sams Teach Yourself StarOffice® 5 for Linux in 24 Hours

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Hour 17: Adding Charts and Graphics to Spreadsheets

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Creating a Chart


A powerful feature of StarOffice is the capability to create charts from the information you enter in the spreadsheet cells. Charts are a great way to highlight your information for presentations and to quickly see trends onscreen.

StarOffice provides many types of charts, with many options. The chart feature is flexible, but it can take some experimentation to get your data to look just right.

Caution - Mark Twain was right when he said, "There are lies, damn lies, and statistics." Check your charts to be sure that they reflect an accurate visual message.


The sections that follow walk you through creating a few basic charts and editing those charts. You'll learn the steps that you can use to create a chart with your own data. You'll be using a set of simple sales data as the basis for your chart samples.

The words chart and graph are used interchangeably in this discussion.

Selecting a Data Set

The first step in creating any chart is to select the data that you want to graph. Use the mouse to click and drag over a block of cells, or use the keyboard to select an area.

The area that you select can be as small or large as you need. It needs to include all the numbers and labels that you want to be part of the graph.

The labels are the headings that you typed in to identify your data. Include these in the cells that you select. The charting feature uses these to place labels on the chart that it creates.

A sample set of data is shown selected, with its labels, in Figure 17.3.

Figure 17.3
A selected set of data, ready to be charted.

Creating a useful chart in StarOffice involves several steps. First, you answer questions in a series of dialog boxes. After the chart is created, you can edit the chart to make it look just as you want it to.

The following sections step you through this process.

Starting a Chart

With a data area selected in your spreadsheet, choose Chart from the Insert menu. The AutoFormat Chart dialog box appears, as shown in Figure 17.4.

Figure 17.4
The first part of the AutoFormat Chart dialog box enables you to set up the location of the chart.

The name in the title bar of the dialog box includes the following: (1-4). Notice the button in the bottom of the dialog box labeled Next>>. You'll use the Next>> and <<Back buttons to look at four different parts of the AutoFormat Chart dialog box, filling in information as you go. You can go to any or all the different parts of the dialog box before pressing the Create button to create the chart that you've defined.

The options in the first part of the dialog box enable you to indicate the location of the chart. Specify both where the data for the chart are being taken from and where the finished chart is to be placed. The options in the first part are as follows:

Note - You're inserting this sample chart on Sheet2 so you can enlarge it and edit it later. If you leave this field set to Sheet1, the chart is inserted next to the cells that you selected.


Selecting a Chart Type

To continue setting up your chart, select the Next>> button to move to the second part of the AutoFormat Chart dialog box, shown in Figure 17.5.

Figure 17.5
In the second part of the AutoFormat Chart dialog box, you select which type of chart to use.

You select the type of chart that you want to use from the set of 12 small pictures in the dialog box (scroll down to see the last four). StarOffice tries to pick an appropriate chart type based on your data, but you might want to change the selected chart type.

Note - Note that some chart types are intended for certain types of data. For example, a pie chart is intended for percentage data, where the total is 100 percent (a full pie).


The available chart types include the following. This list uses the names that StarOffice uses, followed by explanation as needed:

The Preview window on the left side of the dialog box shows you how the data appears as a chart of the selected type. The preview image changes as you select different chart types.

Caution - The color of the charts might not appear correctly in the Preview window or in the finished chart. This makes it difficult to judge the data in the chart. In the next section, you'll learn how to edit the colors to make your chart readable.


It is recommended that you select the Show text elements in preview checkbox. It makes the graphic part of the chart preview smaller, but it helps you to visualize how the final chart will look. In the third and fourth parts of the dialog box, it also helps to determine the effect you are having with your selections.

For this sample data, a vertical bar graph (columns) has been selected, as shown in the previous figure.

Selecting a Chart Variant

To continue the process of defining your chart, choose the Next>> button. The screen that you see next depends on which chart type you selected in the second screen. The one you see (after choosing the Columns chart type) is shown in Figure 17.6.

Figure 17.6
In the third part of the AutoFormat Chart dialog box, select a chart variant and choose whether to display the grid lines.

You can always move back and forth between the sections of this dialog box and change any selections that you've made. To see this, use the following steps:

1. Press the <<Back button. The second part of the dialog box is shown.

2. Select the Pie chart type.

3. Press the Next>> button. The third part of the dialog box is shown again, but the chart type variants from which you can choose are all pie charts instead of column charts (see Figure 17.7).

Figure 17.7
The variants in the third part of the AutoFormat Chart dialog box depend on which chart type is selected.

We'll continue with the columns type for this example if you want to go back and choose the columns chart type before going on.

Following is a look at the chart variants for the columns chart that was selected. You might want to look back at the data in the cells to see how it can be represented in different ways.

You can see why a bit of experimentation is suggested to get your graph just right.

Because we're more interested in developing an attractive chart than in teaching Statistics 101, we'll select the Normal chart variant.

The checkboxes in the third section of the dialog box are used to turn the grid lines on or off. You can see the gridlines in the preview window as you select or deselect the checkboxes.

Note - All the checkboxes in this part of the dialog box might not be available. For example, the Z axis checkbox is only available if you selected a three-dimensional chart type.


You can continue to the final part of the AutoFormat Chart dialog box by pressing the Next>> button.

Labeling Your Chart

In the fourth and last section of the AutoFormat Chart dialog box (shown in Figure 17.8), you can set options for how the chart is labeled and which text elements are included on it.

Figure 17.8
In the fourth part of the AutoFormat Chart dialog box, you determine which text labels are included on the chart.

If you want to include a title at the top of your chart, leave the Chart Title checkbox selected and enter the name of the chart in the text entry field (where Main Title is entered by default).

Tip - You won't always want a title, depending on what other information is nearby in your spreadsheet.


If you want to include a legend on your chart, leave the Yes button selected in the Add legend section. It is recommended that you include a legend as you develop your chart. You can turn it off after you've seen that the chart is appropriate to your needs.

Tip - A legend is a mini-chart that coordinates the graphical information on the chart to the labels that give them meaning, for example, a red box to indicate first quarter profits.


If you want titles on the axes, select the X axis or Y axis checkbox. These are useful if you're not certain that readers will know which side of the graph corresponds to which part of the data.

If you've selected the checkbox to display text elements in the preview, you can see these labels being added as you select the checkboxes.

Finally, you can select a checkbox to indicate whether the data series that you're graphing are in rows or in columns. This needs to be on the first part of the dialog instead of the fourth, but you can back up if you need to change chart types.

To understand this option, here's a look at the sample data that has been used for this chart. It includes four columns, one for each quarter of a year, and three rows, for three different sources of revenue. (An additional row and column are for labels, but that was indicated in the first part of the dialog box.)

If you use rows as the data series (which StarOffice selected by default), you have three sets of data with four pieces of data in each set (one for each quarter). This is displayed as four sets of chart columns, with each set containing three pieces--one for each source of revenue. This graphic is shown in Figure 17.9 as it appears in the Preview window.

This can be described as follows: "Each quarter's revenue is shown separately, broken down into its three sources of revenue."

Now click on the columns button in the dialog box, and the preview chart changes. StarOffice is seeing the column of three figures as a series of data points, with four data points for each (from four different columns). This graphic is shown in Figure 17.10 as it appears in the Preview window.

Figure 17.9
Using rows as the data series, you see four sets of data with three items in each set.

Figure 17.10
Using columns as the data series, you see three sets of data with four items in each set.

This can be described as follows: "Each source of revenue is shown together, with the year's revenue broken down by quarter for that source." Looking from left to right in the figure, you see the sets of data for Domestic Direct, Domestic Retail, and International revenue.

You can see a couple of things from this example:

With all these selections made, you're ready to create your chart. Choose the Create button. The dialog box closes and the chart you defined appears on the sheet that you selected (see Figure 17.11). The chart is selected and ready to edit, which is covered in the next section.

Figure 17.11
The chart you define is inserted into the sheet, ready to be edited as needed.

Tip - Charts in your spreadsheet are dynamic. If you change the value of a cell that has been charted, the chart changes immediately to reflect the new data.


Caution - A chart that you insert into a spreadsheet doesn't fill the cells. It covers them up. You can still have (and lose track of) data in cells behind a chart.


Sams Teach Yourself StarOffice® 5 for Linux in 24 Hours

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Hour 17: Adding Charts and Graphics to Spreadsheets

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