Select data to display as a chart

- [Instructor] The first step in creating a chart,…and actually, you might even call it the prerequisite step,…is to select the data to appear in a chart.…On this worksheet called Data Selection…in the Chapter Two creating file,…we've got some data in rows two through eight.…Now, you wouldn't necessarily know that Excel,…when it sees the data that you've selected for a chart,…will intelligently use label-like information,…like we're seeing in row two, and in column A.…If we were to create a chart based on this data,…it would be a good idea to include the details,…but not the totals.…

If we do include the totals,…just looking at some of those numbers.…One is as high as 2300, some of those numbers…are as low as 40,…seeing those together, for example, on the column chart,…just wouldn't look that good,…so we're going to not go down that path,…but instead highlight just this data.…And a quick way to create a chart,…we'll cover this in more detail in later movies,…is simply to press the keystroke combination Alt + F1.…