Resizing, moving, copying, and manipulating charts and other objects

- When you work with charts and objects like the ones we're seeing on this worksheet to the right, there are key stroke short cuts that you can use as you redesign the look of these or create them. Let's first create a chart, here. With this data here, I'll just simply click in the middle. Since it's surrounded by empty cells, I can create a chart quickly simply with Alt F1. By the way, a nice way to add a title is simply to click the existing chart title place holder, type equal, and click on a relevant cell that has the data that you want to use for a title. In this case, It's A1 and Enter.

There we are. In order to see the edges of this chart a bit more clearly, I'm simply going to choose one of the chart formats available on the design tab that has a black background. Easier to see the edges now. As soon as you create a chart, either by this short method that I just used, here, Alt F1 or standard method, it's almost always the case that you want to move it around. You can move a chart by dragging from the upper right hand corner. You can drag an edge as well too. Sometimes dragging the edge is a little bit more tedious.

Just drag from the upper right hand corner. When you resize a chart, observe that every object including a chart has what are called handles on it. You'll see them on the mid points of the sides, as well as the four corners. When you slide the mouse over one of those handles, you'll see a two way arrow. If it's on the corners, it'll be diagonal. I've got the mouse in the upper right corner. If I click and drag, I can make this chart smaller. I can make it a lot narrower. I can make it a lot shorter.

I can make it wider, taller, in a variety of ways. If I want to keep the same ratio from height to width, here, that's sometimes referred to as the aspect ratio, I'll be holding down the Shift key. Instead of being able to do this, when I'm holding down Shift, I'm only able to do this. I can make it larger of smaller. I can do this from any of the four corners. In other words, I want to keep that same look, so to speak, height to width, but maybe make a bit smaller. Whenever you're using the mouse in combination with a key, be sure to let go of the mouse first.

I let go of the mouse and there's the new size. I might scroll down a little bit. I'd like to move the chart, put it below the data over here. Looks good. Sometimes when you're moving charts around, it occurs to you that it might look a little neater, a little tidier if the edges of the chart align with the cell boundaries in the background. If you drag any of the handles, this could be side or top, left, right, whatever, I can move this anywhere I want, but if I hold down the Alt key, notice how it automatically jumps as like a magnetic attraction to the edges of the cells.

If you'd like to do this for two different sides at the same time, drag one of the corner handles. It doesn't make any difference which one. I'm going to click upper right, here, and start to move this around. Without holding down Alt, I can take this anywhere I want, but if I hold down Alt, it has this result of only being attracted to the cell boundaries. Maybe I'll move it over here, let go of the mouse first. In its opposite corner, usually it works best that way, I can do the same kind of thing. I'll drag it around here. Let's say in this scenario I don't care about that ratio of height to width so much.

I want to make sure that the chart lines up with the cell boundaries. I'm holding down Alt. Looks pretty good there. I'll let go of the mouse. Sometimes it's not clear how smooth this is or how accurate it is until you click outside. There it is there. Same thing happens with objects. I can move this around. I can resize this if I want to keep the same aspect ratio. If I'm not doing anything with any special key, this is how it will look, but if I hold down Shift, I'll make it bigger or smaller this way.

With objects more so than charts, you might want to keep the same center, but with either one, if you hold down the Control key and change the shape of the chart, you can make it wider, taller, bigger in different ways around the same center. Maybe I want to make this a bit wider, but I want to keep the same center. I'm about to either drag the right edge or the left edge, doesn't make any difference, but now I'm holding down the Control, then you'll see what's about to happen. Narrower, wider, around the same center.

Similarly, from top or bottom, I'm about to drag from the top, I'm holding down Control. I can make it taller or shorter this way. It's unlikely you'd want to do that with a chart, but you can certainly do the same thing there as well too. Another wish could be I want to make this smaller or larger and keep the same ratio of height to width. Remember, it's the Shift key that we use for the same aspect ratio. Control key for the same center. If it helps, Control and center both begin with the letter C. I want to make this larger.

I want to keep the same center and the same aspect ratio. I've got Control and shift both held down as I drag a corner. You'll see what's happening. I've got Control and Shift both held down. What happens if I drag a side? I've got Control and Shift held down. It, essentially, ignores that I've got Shift held down there. It's when you drag a corner that you keep the same aspect ratio if you wish. When you create shapes, you also have some creativity as well. First of all, if I want to create another one of these, I don't have to recreate it, I can simply click on it and press Control D.

I've duplicated it. I can do it a few more times if I wanted to. Maybe I'm going to put text in each of these, like I've got text in the purple box below. By the way, you can also do this with charts. I might want to have a different view of this data, but I'll start by simply taking the existing chart, press Control D, think of duplicate. I've duplicated it, and what I'll do to make a quick change, here, on the design tab in the ribbon, I'll simply switch the row column orientation. That looks pretty bad right there at first.

If I move it around a little bit and manipulate the data inside of it and just change the size. Those are two different charts. I'm not going to do much more with them. It's just the idea that I duplicated the first chart with Control D, I took the second chart in a different direction by switching row column, and maybe I'll make it look a little bit better or make the legend smaller or do other things. For the moment, let's say I don't care. I'll just move it out of the way down over here for a while. Back at the shapes. We duplicated a shape just as we did with the chart, Control D.

I don't really need this one, so click Delete, click Delete, click Delete. Let's create another shape. By the way, you might notice that this octagon to the right is a perfect octagon. It's equally angular equilateral. The star is the same and so is this item, here, although we can't really say that's equilateral, but as we create shapes, we have the option of insuring that it is a so called perfect shape. Again, there's no pure definition for perfect shape, but you'll quickly understand what it means.

How do we create these? Insert tab in the ribbon. It's the shapes box. Depending upon your screen resolution, this might appear substantially larger. I'm going to click the drop arrow. Let's suppose I want to create a hexagon. I'm about to create a hexagon. It could be really wide, it could be really tall. I could go anywhere I want with this, but if I want it to be a perfect hexagon, I'm holding down the Shift key. If I want to create a circle, I'm going to insert. In the shapes, there's no circle here, but there is an oval.

There's an oval. Wider, taller, smaller as I wish, but if I want it to be a perfect circle, I'm holding down the Shift key. There could be times, this wouldn't happen too often, but you might want to create a shape from the center outward. Maybe I want to create a circle that's centered on the lower point of this star right here. Shapes, there's the oval again. I'm pointing on that tip right there and as I start to draw, here, I've got the Control key held down.

I do want it to be a perfect circle. I'll also have Shift held down as I drag this. You see what's happening there. I've got Shift and Control held down. I'm drawing the shape from the center outward because I've got Control held down and it's a perfect circle because I'm holding down Shift. If I let go of Shift, I'm creating an oval, but it is centered because I'm holding down the Control key. In varying degrees, here, and if you don't use these often, you'll probably forget which and which, but Control and Shift are the keys we use to change these shapes in different ways.

You'll also notice with objects that we can rotate them. There's a rotation button. I can rotate this any way I want, but if I'm holding down the Shift key, note that it sort of clicks into place. I can rotate these in 15 degree increments, is what's happening here, by holding down the Shift key. Otherwise, I can rotate these anyway I want. In creating a line or an arrow, and they're very similar in nature, insert, back to the shapes, here's an arrow.

As I draw this, I can make it go anywhere I want, but if I hold down the Shift key, it will be either horizontal or at different 45 degree angles. I'd be totally vertical. We can make it go different ways, here. Off to the right, you'll see what's happening. I'll let go of the mouse and the key. As I drag this around, I can go anywhere I want, but if I hold down Shift, I can only make it shorter or longer in the same plane.

Various techniques we're seeing here. With holding down the Shift key and holding down the Control, not only as we create objects, but also as we manipulate them, many times the reason we put these objects here is not just for color on the worksheet, but because we want to put text in them like this. We can also associate these with macros too. It's easy to create these as it is with charts and it's easy to manipulate them, but when you know those keystroke shortcuts of holding down the Control key or the Shift key and also remember that one time we used the Alt key when we're lining up edges of charts, there's the Alt key again.

We can make our manipulation of these a lot faster and easier and more proficient.