Excel Version 15 Pareto Chart Software Of This

This is actually my favorite part of the whole process, since Excel 2010 has a lot of great design tools.

Excel Version 15 Pareto Chart Software Of This

Although Pareto charts can be easily graphed in several different project management applications, not everyone has access to software of this type.

Fortunately, these analysis tools can also be created in Microsoft Excel, and well explain how in this step-by-step guide.

You can also use this same technique to create a Pareto chart in older versions of Excelthe tools are just in different locations.

Excel 2007 and 2010 both have the new Microsoft Office ribbon, while previous versions of the software still use toolbar menus.

This doesnt have to be a fancy table, but it does need to contain information on Count, Percent of Total, and Cumulative Percent as shown in the screenshot above.

We actually wont use the Count column to create the Pareto chart, but it is needed to calculate the other figures so were including it in this example.

Plus, some people may choose to display the Count instead of the Percent of Total on the chart.

This information will be used to graph a horizontal line at the 80 cut-off mark on the final chart in our examplebut it really is completely optional.

If your data is in non-adjacent columns, like in our example here, hold down the Ctrl key in order to select multiple items at once.

From the Charts group on this tab, select Column and then pick the first entry ( Clustered Column ) of the 2-D Column choices, as shown in the image to the right.

It may not look much like a Pareto chart yet, but dont worry We still have a few adjustments to make to get our formatting right.

While this isnt completely necessary, it may make the components easier to see and work with in later steps.

Plus, you can always resize again at the end of the process if you like.

When the Change Chart Type window appears (see left screenshot), choose the first option in the Line category.

The large image above shows that our graph is finally starting to take on the appearance of a Pareto chart.

Here are a few additional things we can doeach of these modifications is optional, so just pick the ones that suit you.

Click Legend from the Labels grouping, and choose the style you like.

For this case, I am going to pick None, because I think the chart is pretty self-explanatory without a legendand I personally prefer graphs with as little clutter as possible.

However, our values here are never going to be over 100, so we can manually change these default values to make a little more sense.

In the pop-up window that appears, select the Fixed option for both Minimum and Maximum, entering 0 for Minimum and 100 for Maximum.

A new window will appear, allowing you to adjust the Series Overlap and Gap Width values.

One nice thingany changes you make here will show on the chart as you make them, so you can play around a little with the sliders to get a result that looks nice to you.

All thats left to do is add a title and play around with the various chart formatting options in Excel to spruce up the overall design.

Excel For Mac Version 15 Pareto Chart