By Bill Jelen

Bill Jelen is the author of 24 books on Microsoft Office Excel. He is a regular guest on TechTV with Leo Laporte and the host of MrExcel.com, which includes more than 300,000 questions and answers about Excel.

Everything on a chart can be customized. There are times when the only way to format something is by clicking it and other times when something is nearly invisible and the only way you can format it is from the Current Selection dropdown. So you need to be ready to use whichever method will get you to the correct element.

This article is an excerpt from Learn Excel 97-2007 from MrExcel by Bill Jelen. Buy the print edition or download a free e-book edition from MrExcel.com.

Other articles by this author

Excel 2007

• Sort all red cells to the top of a report
• Use validation to create dependent lists
• How to fit a multiline heading into one cell
• Change the width of all columns with one command
• How to make a wide report fit to one page wide by many pages tall
• For each cell in column A, have three rows in column B
• Display a chart axis in trillions
• Raise a number to a fraction to find the square or third root
• Total minutes that exceed an hour
• Calculate a running percentage of total
• Calculate a trendline forecast
• Rank scores in Excel 2007
• How to do 40 different what-if analyses quickly
• Back into an answer using Goal Seek

Excel 2003

• Use color banding to locate the active cell
• Three ways to convert numbers to text
• Five ways to subtotal values in repeating data
• Conditional formatting: Considering the fourth option
• Locate duplicates by using conditional formatting
• Change cell background color using VBA