Academic Skills - Excel Resources - Graphs

COMPUTING SKILLS: EXCEL

Excel Exercises

Key Skills Business & Management

Computing Skills

Excel Support Exercises The following exercises have been designed to support the Excel manual. You will need to download the ‘Excel Exercises 2’ file from the BAM151 Homepage on Portia to complete these exercises successfully.

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Excel Exercises

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Excel Exercises

Using Charts 1) Using the data below, produce an Excel chart which you think would most effectively shows the distribution of tourism by location. Create your chart, format and print out.

[Source: Staruk.org]

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Excel Exercises

Using Charts 1) Excel charts can be used to present data effectively for use in essays, reports and seminar presentations.

The aim of this exercise booklet is to enhance your skills at creating a wide variety of charts using Excel.

Before using this booklet, it is advised that you run through the basic exercises in the Excel handbook.

2) Before you start download the ‘Excel Exercises 2’ file from the BAM151 home page on Portia. Click the Using Charts 1 tab at the bottom of the screen - Table 1 appears, which shows the distribution of hotel accommodation in England. You are now going to use Excel charts to visually present the data.

Holding down the Control and Cap Lock buttons on the key board select cells A5 to II5 (as shown above). Click the Chart Wizard button (

) and after selecting a

100% stacked bar chart follow the remaining steps through the Chart Wizard dialog box.

Note that we have not included the totals column as this would distort the overall chart.

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Excel Exercises Refer to page 41 in your Excel manual for assistance. Use the formatting options available to you to create a chart identical to the one illustrated below. Print out a copy.

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Excel Exercises 3) Look at your finished chart. Be critical...is this chart really effective? The answer is no, as we have tried to squeeze in too much data and as a result the graph is too complicated and difficult to interpret because the values of some of the size categories are so small. Can you present the data more effectively? The answer is yes. Complete Table 2 on this spreadsheet and repeat the above exercise. Presenting the size categories as small, medium and large should make the chart more visually effective. Your final chart should look similar to the one on page 5. Print out a copy.

4) In addition to bar charts we can also use pie charts to highlight the size distribution of hotel accommodation. However, remember we can only use a pie chart to reflect the size distribution for one specific tourist board region at a time. Refer back to Table 2. Holding down the Control and Cap Lock buttons on the key board select the cells showing the category titles (A24 to E24) and the row showing the values for the West Country (A33 to E33).

Click the Chart Wizard button (

), select a pie chart and then follow the steps in the Chart

Wizard dialog box. Use the formatting options to create a pie chart similar to that on page 6. When complete convert the chart to a 3D chart to recreate a pie chart similar to that on page 6.

Repeat exercise but use values for other tourist board regions. For example compare the West Country to London. By aligning the charts carefully on the spreadsheet, it is possible to print out two pie charts together (see page 7). This method will be demonstrated in the session.

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Excel Exercises

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Excel Exercises

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Excel Exercises

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Excel Exercises

Excel Exercises Exercise 1:

1) Click the Using Charts 2 tab on the worksheet. Table 3 appears, showing figures for international tourism arrivals and receipts 1970 to 1997.

a) Produce a line graph that illustrates the growth in arrivals and receipts since 1970.

Experiment with different formatting options to make the chart look as effective and professional as you can. b) Produce a combination chart, in which arrivals is represented by a line, and receipts is represented by columns. To do this you need to add a secondary axis (see page 14). c) Convert the chart to a 3D format, and experiment with different 3D views. d) What other chart types could be used to illustrate this data effectively? Experiment with different chart types.

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Excel Exercises

Excel Exercises

Exercise 2:

1) Click the Using Charts 3 tab on the worksheet. Table 4 appears, showing employment figures for the UK tourism inudstry.

a) Produce a basic clustered column chart to highlight the regional variation in employment characteristics between the different tourism sectors. Do not include England, Scotland and Wales in this graph. b) Repeat the exercise, but this time produce a 100% stacked column. Which chart is more effective? Compare a 100% stacked column to a 100% stacked bar. Again think about which chart type displays the information most effectively (refer back to the Excel manual if needed). c) Produce a 3D pie chart, which illustrates the regional variation in employment levels in the hotel sector. d) Produce a 3D pie chart, which illustrates the employment structure of the tourism industry in the West Country. e) Produce a clustered bar chart to highlight the different employment structures in England, Scotland and Wales.

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Excel Exercises

Excel Exercises

Exercise 3:

1) Click the Using Charts 4 tab on the worksheet. Table 5 appears, showing the volume and value of tourism in the different Regional Tourist Board areas.

a) Produce a basic clustered column chart to highlight the regional distribution of tourism trips and nights.

b) Within Excel, produce 3 separate pie charts that illustrate the regional distribution of trips, nights and expenditure. Arrange these pie charts on the spreadsheet and attempt to print these charts together on one sheet of A4. All pie charts should be the same size and adopt the formatting scheme.

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Excel Exercises

Excel Exercises

Exercise 4:

1) Click the Using Charts 5 tab on the worksheet. Table 6 appears, showing the results of a quality benchmarking exercise between 3 UK seaside resorts.

a) Choose a chart type that you think will present this data most effectively. Look beyond the column, bar and pie charts that you have already used in this workbook.

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Excel Exercises

Creating a Combination Chart

The following notes are designed to provide a basic introduction to creating a combination chart in Excel. First create the basic table using the available data, mapping both data variables. In the following example, we are using international arrivals and receipts (see page 8).

You Excel chart should look something like this:

Move the mouse over the Receipts data series (move the mouse over the line) and double click the left mouse button. The Format Data Series dialog box appears.

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Excel Exercises Click the Axis tab.

Change Primary Axis to Secondary Axis and click OK

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Excel Exercises You are returned to the Excel spreadsheet. Note that a secondary axis has been added to your graph.

You now need to label the graph to clearly distinguish between the different data series.

Select the chart, and then select Chart>Chart Options in the main menu. Label your chart appropriately.

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Excel Exercises You are returned to the Excel spreadsheet. Note that your chart is now fully labelled. The last job is to now change the Receipt data series from a line chart to a column chart.

Move the mouse over the Receipts data series and click the left mouse button. The data series is selected.

Select Chart>Chart Type from the main menu.

Select Column and click OK.

Click OK.

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Excel Exercises You are returned to the Excel spreadsheet. Note that the Receipt data series is now presented as a column chart. Format the different elements of the chart accordingly.

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