
- #CUSTOMIZE COLORS IN PIE CHART EXCEL 2011 FOR MAC HOW TO#
- #CUSTOMIZE COLORS IN PIE CHART EXCEL 2011 FOR MAC SERIES#
Fortunately, there are lots of creative people out there willing to provide you with samples, or at least a start. For me, using those default colors suggests a level of laziness-that the creator couldn’t bother to consider alternative colors to better display the data or convey their argument.īut how do you choose alternative color palettes? If you’re not a designer (like me), this might seem an impossible task. Using color in some of the default tools such as Excel and Tableau will yield visualizations that look just like everything else. As Maureen Stone once famously wrote, “Color used poorly will obscure, muddle and confuse.” It can be used to make things seem drab or to make them “pop”. Color can be used to highlight and draw attention, but also to confuse. You will see that this has also been updated to match the varied fills used.Choosing and implementing color palettes is a difficult task in visualizing data. Also compare the Legend in both Figures 2 and 6. This step will change the color of individual category elements to match the accent colors of the active Theme of your presentation as shown in Figure 6, below (compare with Figure 2).Then, click the Close button, as shown highlighted in blue within Figure 5.įigure 5: Vary colors by point check box selected
#CUSTOMIZE COLORS IN PIE CHART EXCEL 2011 FOR MAC SERIES#
Remember that you can see this option only when there is just a single series in your chart.
#CUSTOMIZE COLORS IN PIE CHART EXCEL 2011 FOR MAC HOW TO#
However, the Vary colors by point option works for a chart with a single series and two or more categories, as shown within Figure 2, below.įollow these steps to learn how to change the color of category elements in a chart with just a single series and multiple categories in PowerPoint 2010 for Windows: You cannot really vary colors of all columns representing Series 1 in this case since that will end up confusing your audience! The color of these 3 series represent the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd accent colors in the active Theme respectively, from left to right.
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As you can see, this is a column chart in which there is a set of 3 series in each of the 4 categories. When you insert a new chart in PowerPoint 2010, it may look like the one you see in Figure 1, below.

This similar colorization also does not provide a proper way for your audience to compare the individual series' elements. If your chart uses the same colored series in all categories, it can make your chart look dull as with the chart shown in Figure 2, later on this page. When a chart in PowerPoint contains only one series and several categories, then by default individual chart segments may use the same fill color (such as individual columns in a column chart) or varying colors (such as segments in a pie chart), depending upon the chart type you are working with.
