Everytime I open up or view a report which still has the default Excel 2003 chart formatting visible I cringe, the grey and off blue colours just make me dry reach.

The whole point of charting is to represent data in a consumable medium, so to go against the grain of ugly Excel 2003 charting I’m going to go over some of my do’s and don’ts when it comes to charting in Excel 2003.

F.Y.I : I know Excel 2007 has some great charting options and anti-aliased charts, however I believe this will benefit the users of Excel 2003.

The Don’ts

Standard Formatting

Ugly colours and hard to read charts

Bright Colours

Blinded by the lights!

Gradient

Distracting

The Do’s

Soft Colours and Whites

To get to the bar chart below I have:

  1. Changed the colours of each series to a more soft and recognisable colour
  2. Removed the black border around each bar series
  3. Changed the
      • This separates and spaces each series for each category.
      • To get to this area you will have to to double click on any series and then click on the Options tab.
    • Overlap : -50
    • Gap : 50.

Obvisouly these steps can be tweaked with how much data you are representing on a chart, especially step 3.

Here is the same example but as a line chart, to get to this step I have:

  1. Changed the colours of each series to a more soft and recognisable colour
  2. Double clicked on each series:
    • Removed any data points
    • Made the width of the of the line the thickest
    • Clicked the smooth line option

So there you have it! This is one way I believe you can improve your charting skills in Excel 2003.

Click here to download this example an Excel Workbook

Enjoy!