Hands on: Improve spreadsheet presentation

Spreadsheets are designed to record, sort, calculate and store data. There are, however, times when you need to add graphics in order to communicate the information more effectively.

You might, for example, like some personalised scorecards for a golfing holiday with friends. To save time later, incorporate their names into a Custom List.

On a clean worksheet, enter the first name in cell A2 and drag it down the column to enter the other names. Enter Out, In and Total in B1:D1. Highlight those ranges in turn and format for the font, size and colour you prefer. Highlight the complete table and choose, Format, Cells, Patterns and select a background colour. Put the second Office XP disc in your DVD drive.

Select Picture amd then Clip Art on the Insert menu. Search in the Clip Art Task Pane for an appropriate illustration and add it to the worksheet. Now you can highlight the complete scorecard and choose Print Area, Set Print Area on the File menu, and print as many copies as you need.

Interactive shapes
Sometimes you need to graphically emphasise a point. Autoshapes can help here. On the Standard Toolbar click the Drawing tool; or choose View, Toolbars, Drawing. Click Autoshapes, Stars and Banners, Explosion 1. Drag this shape out on to a worksheet. Right-click on the shape. Choose Add Text and type something in the shape. Right-click the edge of the shape and choose Format Autoshape.

Under the Font tab pick the size, colour and style of font you wish to use. Under the Colors and Lines tab choose the fill colour and outline colour for the shape. Under the Alignment tab choose Center for the Horizontal and Vertical alignment, and check the Automatic size box.

This adjusts the shape to fit your text. If you right-click on the shape and enter a cell address in the Formula Bar, you can have an interactive entry in it. The attached PDF shows an explosion shape with data from cell G5. If the value in G5 is changed, the value in the shape will change.

You can choose Sheet, Background on the Format menu and choose a picture or pattern appropriate to the document. In this example it’s marbling. Clip Art offers a range of photographs, line art, cartoons and symbols. But that’s just one way to brighten up worksheet data. Wordart is another. It’s a good solution for creating logos you can use in any Office application. You can easily transfer it to a web page, too.

Take a screen grab. Paste it into a photo editor and save it as a .jpg file. In your web page code include an instruction like

<IMG alt=”logo”

src=”logo.jpg” border=0>

Dramatic graphs
It’s often not realised that graphics can be substituted for the vertical bars in a column chart. Not that you would want to do it regularly, but a cover of an annual report might use an image based on a chart. To try it out enter Bulbs, Plants and Shrubs in the range B2:B4; and 41,321, 105,456, and 125,311 in C2:C4. Enter Spring in C1.

Highlight B1:C4. Click the Chart Wizard. Choose the first Column chart type. In Step 2, choose Series in: Rows. Click the Next buttons until Step 4 where you can choose to have the chart on a new sheet. Right-click the vertical axis and choose Format axis. Under the Scale tab change the Maximum Y-Scale to 140,000.

Right-click any column, choose Format Data Series and under the Options tab, adjust the Overlap and Gap width options so the columns become fatter and the space between them less. Under the Patterns tab, click the Fill Effects button, the Picture tab, and the select Picture button. Here you can choose a photo from your My Pictures folder.