Curriculum Areas: Language arts/math/social studies/science Grade Level: 2 and up Application: Microsoft Excel 2002 Tip: Change a plain chart into a fancy pictograph in Excel. Description: After creating a plain Excel chart, students see how fancy, yet meaningful, it can become by changing it into a pictograph. A pictograph is a graph that uses pictures to show and compare information. Excel stretches or stacks the picture to represent the values being graphed. Why not use a real picture of a macaw in a comparison of rain forest birds? Or stack a picture of a car or airplane in a transportation graph? Or, if students are comparing U.S. male and female populations, they can use pictures to represent those groups. The possibilities are endless.
After creating a spreadsheet to represent your data, create a bar chart. Don't format it yet--you can do that after you change the chart to a pictograph.
2.
Review your chart, and decide whether you want to use the same picture for all the bars or different pictures for each bar. IMPORTANT: You need to have a picture file on your drive in order to create a pictograph. If you want to use the same picture for all bars:
1.
Double-click one of the bars, and in the Format Data Series dialog box, click Fill Effects on the Patterns tab.
2.
In the Fill Effects dialog box, on the Picture tab, click Select Picture, and then select a picture from your folder or network drive. Click the Insert button.
3.
On the Picture tab, in the Format section, select Stretch, Stack, or Stack and scale to. Click OK when you’re finished. Click OK again to see your bars change to pictures.
If you want to use a different picture for each bar:
1.
Click once on one of the bars, and then click once again on the bar that you would like to change to a picture (you'll see selection boxes around just this one bar). Double-click this bar, and then click Fill Effects on the Patterns tab.
2.
In the Fill Effects dialog box, on the Picture tab, click Select Picture, and then select a picture from your folder or network drive. Click the Insert button.
3.
On the Picture tab, in the Format section, select Stretch, Stack, or Stack and scale to. Click OK when you're finished. Click OK again to see just the one bar change to the picture that you selected.
4.
Repeat steps a-c to apply pictures to the other bars.
