Add Data to Charts with Copy Paste [Quick Tip]

Add Data to Charts with Copy Paste [Quick Tip]:
So how did your weekend go?
I did a bit of gardening, painted our car shed, played badminton (I am learning), attended 60th birthday of a close friend’s dad. Pretty hectic, but fun as usual.
To start this week, let me share a simple but fun way to add data to charts.
Lets say you have a chart that depicts Annual sales for last few years. And you want to add the data of Profits (or Expenses) to this chart. Here is a dead-simple way to do it.

1. Copy the profit data by selecting it and pressing CTRL+C
2. Select the chart
3. Paste by pressing CTRL+V
4. That is all!

See the demo alongside to understand how this works.

Bonus Tips:

1. While pasting, if you go for Paste Special (CTRL+ALT+V or ALT+E S) you can tell whether the data should be added as a new series or new points and several other things.
2. To remove a series of data from a chart, just select the series and hit DEL key.
3. To extend a series (ie add new points to it), select the series. Now you will see that Excel has highlighted the range of cells corresponding to that series. Just point your mouse at the bottom-right corner and resize the range to add new points to the chart.

More Quick Tips on Excel Charting

There are a ton of things you can do in Excel with a click of mouse or press of few keys. Whenever we learn something that is simple yet very useful, we share it as a quick tip. Browse thru these to learn more on Excel Charting.

• Highlight points in line charts & scatter plots
• Display Alert Symbols in Dashboards using Conditional Formatting
• Change Data Labels in Charts to whatever you want
• Use Paste Special to Speed up Chart Formatting
• Hide “0″ in Excel Chart’s Axis
• Create a combination chart, add secondary axis
• More Quick Tips & Chart Formatting Tips