Using the Object Properties dialog
Depending on what purpose your document has, as a screen presentation, or a printed document for a black and white publication, you might find the granular control over the different chart elements that the Object Properties dialog gives you is what you need.
To access the Object Properties dialog, left-click on the element that you wish to change. It will be highlighted with green squares. Right-click and choose Object Properties from the pop-up menu. Each chart element has its own selection of tabs. In the next few sections we explore some of the options in the Object Properties dialog.
Scaling axes
Sometimes you need to have a special scale for one of the axes of your chart. After highlighting the axis you wish to change, right-click and choose Object Properties. On the Scale tab, you can decide if you need a logarithmic or linear scale (default), how many marks you need on the line, where the marks are to appear, and the increments (intervals) of the scale.
You must first deselect the Automatic option in order to modify the value for any scale.
Formatting data labels and axis labels
There are also object properties for the labels of the chart elements. Carefully click on the chart element and access the object properties dialog, where you can change the color of the label text, the size of the font, and other attributes.
On the Data Labels tab, you can choose whether to:
- Show the labels as text
- Show numeric values as a percentage or a number
- Include the legend box as part of the label
These choices are the same as those shown for the Data Labels dialog.
The text for labels is taken from the column labels and it cannot be changed here. If the text needs to be abbreviated, or if it did not label your graph as you were expecting, it is not possible to change it in the Object properties dialog. You need to change it in the original data table.
Axis labels have different choices. The Label tab of the object properties is shown below.
Choosing and formatting symbols
In line and scatter charts the symbols representing the points can be changed to a different symbol shape or color through the object properties dialog.
On the Line tab of the Data Series object properties dialog, in the Icon section, choose from the drop-down list Select > Symbols. Here you can choose no symbol, a symbol from an inbuilt selection, a more exciting range from the gallery, or if you have pictures you need to use instead, you can insert them using Select > From file.
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