Change the layout or style of a chart

After you create a chart, you can instantly change its look. Instead of manually adding or changing chart elements or formatting the chart, you can quickly apply a predefined layout and style to your chart. Office provides a variety of useful predefined layouts and styles (or quick layouts and quick styles) that you can select from. However, you can customize a layout or style of a chart further by manually changing the layout and style of the individual chart elements that are used in the chart.

You cannot save a custom layout or format, but if you want to use the same layout or format again, you can save the chart as a chart template.

Select a predefined chart layout

1. On the Insert tab, in the Illustrations group, select Chart.

2. Select the chart that you want to format. This displays the Chart Tools, adding the Chart Design and Format tabs.

3. On the Chart Design tab, in the Chart Layouts group, select Quick Layout.

4. Select the chart layout that you want to use.

   Note

   When the Excel window is reduced in size, chart layouts will be available in the Quick Layout gallery in the Chart Layouts group.

Select a predefined chart style

1. On the Insert tab, in the Illustrations group, select Chart.

2. Select the chart that you want to format. This displays the Chart Tools, adding the Chart Design and Format tabs.

3. On the Chart Design tab, in the Chart Styles group, click the chart style that you want to use.

   

   • To see all predefined chart styles, select More .

   Note

   When the Excel window is reduced in size, chart styles will be available in the Chart Quick Styles gallery in the Chart Styles group.

   Tip

   Chart styles use the colors of the current document theme that is applied to the workbook. You can change the colors by switching to a different document theme. You can also customize a document theme to display a chart in the exact colors that you want.

Change the layout of chart elements manually

1. On the Insert tab, in the Illustrations group, select Chart.

2. Select the chart that you want to format. This displays the Chart Tools, adding the Chart Design and Format tabs.

3. On the Chart Design tab, select Add Chart Element.

4. Choose one of the following:

   • Axes
   • Axis Titles
   • Chart Title
   • Data Labels
   • Data Table
   • Error Bars
   • Gridlines
   • Legend
   • Lines
   • Trendline
   • Up/Down Bars

Change the formatting style of chart elements manually

1. Select the chart element that you want to change or do the following to select it from a list of chart elements:

   1. Select the chart. This displays the Chart Tools, adding the Chart Design and Format tabs.

   2. On the Format tab, in the Current Selection group, select the dropdown next to Plot Area and then select the chart element for which you want to change the formatting style.

      

2. On the Format tab, do one of the following:

   1. In the Current Selection group, select Format Selection, and then in the Format >chart element> dialog box, select the formatting options that you want.
   2. In the Shape Styles group, select the More button , and then select a style.
      
   3. In the Shape Styles group, select Shape Fill, Shape Outline, or Shape Effects and then select the formatting options that you want.
   4. In the WordArt Styles group, select a WordArt Style option, or click Text Fill, Text Outline, or Text Effects, and then select the text formatting options that you want.

Save a chart as a chart template

If you want to create another chart such as the one that you just created, you can save the chart as a template that you can use as the basis for other similar charts.

1. Select the chart that you want to save as a template. This displays the Chart Tools, adding the Chart Design and Format tabs.
2. On the Chart Design tab, in the Type group, click Save as Template.
   
3. In the File name box, type a name for the template.