Excel Charts 2016 Free Name Manager

Note that Ive included the worksheet name and exclamation point, which means the Name will be in scope (i.e., available) for the worksheet Names.

Good question, and I wondered if hed encountered some unexpected problem, perhaps a bug, in Mac Excel.

The protocols are the same for Mac Excel and Windows Excel, and perhaps its time for a quick review.

This exercise was done completely in Mac Excel 2016, and other than not knowing a few of the shortcuts I use everyday, it was not very different from working in Windows Excel 2016.

But once youve created a chart, it keeps plotting data from the same cells.

If the data in the cells changes, so does the chart, but if the data extends to more cells (or shrinks to fewer cells), the chart doesnt seem to notice.

A bit more complicated is to use Excels Names to define the series data for your chart.

Using Names can lead to more flexibility in defining the data in your charts.

Ill describe how to make dynamic charts using Tables, using Names, and using Names in a more flexible way.

You could sort and filter your data range easily, and any formula that used a whole column of your List updated to automatically keep using that whole column of the list.

Lists became the favored source data for charts and also for pivot tables.

Excel asks if your table has headers, then it applies a Table style (the yellow style is shown below), it adds AutoFilter dropdown arrows to the field headers, and it puts a small backwards L bracket at the bottom right corner of the table.

And a chart that uses all rows of the existing Table will expand accordingly.

A chart that uses all of the existing Table will expand accordingly.

If my sales tax rate was stored in cell A1, then my Name SalesTax would have a definition of A1.

Because of this, John Walkenbach proposed that Names should be called Named Formulas, but hes smarter than the rest of us, so his suggestion didnt stick.

Well need one Name for the X values if the series use the same X values range, and well need one Name for the Y values of each series.

Ill call them XValues, Y1Values, and Y2Values, and I will define them as follows.

Its easy to see that adding another value into cell A8 will expand this range to A2:A8.

However, if we add a value in cell A57, it will also expand our range to A2:A8, so we need to make sure the rows below our data are kept blank.

If we dont specify sizes, then the new Names will define ranges the same size as the anchor.

The Windows dialog is a bit more extensive, and Windows Excel has a much better Names Manager (this dialog happens to serve as the Macs Names Manager).

Excel Charts 2016 Free Name Manager

For a truly powerful Name Manager, you should try out the free Name Manager add-in at the website of my colleague, Excel MVP Jan Karel Pieterse.

Excel Charts For Mac 2016