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Excel - Create Organized and Visually Appealing Excel Charts with This Handy Trick! - Episode 609

447 views · Published 7 April 2009 · 2:16 · Indexed 20 September 2026

Channel: MrExcel.com · 2009 · Education

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Microsoft Excel Tutorial - Create Organized and Visually Appealing Excel Charts with This Handy Trick!

Welcome back to the MrExcel netcast! In this video, I'll be showing you a handy trick for creating more organized and visually appealing charts in Excel. Last week, I talked about breaking one chart into four to make it easier to read. Today, we'll be discussing how to hide rows in a chart to make it more manageable.

Let's say we have a large dataset with multiple sales reps and we want to create a chart to display their sales data. Trying to fit all of them onto one chart would be a nightmare. But fear not, because Excel has a fantastic feature that automatically removes data from a chart when you hide the corresponding rows. 

To demonstrate this, I'll create a chart with all the sales reps using the insert chart function. As you can see, it's completely unreadable and the data is even reversed. To fix this, I'll go to "Chart" and then "Source Data" and change the data to be in rows instead of columns. This creates a hideous chart that no one could ever hope to understand. 

But here's where the magic happens. I'll move the chart above the data and then use the "Data" tab to filter the data. By selecting "Auto Filter" and choosing a specific name from the list, all other rows will be hidden and the chart will snap into a more organized and visually appealing format. You can even remove the legend for a cleaner look. 

This trick is great for creating adhoc reporting tools. Simply choose a different name from the list and the chart will update to show only that rep's data. And the best part? This is actually a default setting in Excel, so you don't have to do anything extra to make it work. It's a simple and effective way to create professional-looking charts in no time. 

Thanks for watching! Don't forget to subscribe to our channel for more helpful Excel tips and tricks. See you next time for another netcast from MrExcel.

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Table of Contents:
(00:00) Introduction to the topic 
(00:14) Breaking one chart into four for easier viewing 
(00:29) Excel's feature of automatically removing hidden data from charts 
(00:40) Creating a visually unappealing chart 
(00:51) Adjusting the chart's source data 
(01:01) Using the chart as an adhoc reporting tool 
(01:26) Removing the legend for a cleaner look 
(01:36) Choosing different reps to view their data 
(01:46) Default setting for hidden rows in charts 
(01:57) Clicking Like really helps the algorithm

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When you hide a row, Excel will remove that series from a chart. In Episode 609, I create a hideous chart, but then use an AutoFilter to create a cool ad-hoc charting tool that allows a sales manager to see results for any one sales rep.

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