This article is an excerpt from Excel 2007 Charts by John Walkenbach. A.k.a. Mr. Spreadsheet, John is arguably the foremost authority on Excel. His forty-plus books include Excel 2007 Power Programming with VBA, Excel 2007 Formulas, and the bestselling Excel 2007 Bible, all published by Wiley. He has also written hundreds of articles and created the award-winning Power Utility Pack. Visit Wiley.com to learn more about this book.

This article presents examples of charts that have been augmented in a number of ways to display various types of lines and background elements. Several of the examples involve tricks that make use of combination charts.