Quickly edit chart series data

Making edits to chart series data or references? Here’s how to edit chart series information quickly.

This tip helps edit chart series data quickly.

The Quick Tip shows how to quickly edit the source range of a chart series.

The Bonus Tip helps you quickly modify existing axis labels in a chart series.

With the Expert Tip you can quickly name or rename a chart series.

We hope you find these tips useful.

Excel Quicker!

Quick Tip

How to quickly edit the data source of a chart series

Sometimes you have an existing chart that contains one or more data series, and you just want to quickly edit the data source.

Maybe you need to extend the existing data when an extra point is added.

Other times, you may want to move the whole data series to draw from a different row, column or worksheet.

To edit the data source for an existing series on a chart, you can choose “Select Data” from the Chart Design tab on the ribbon toolbar.

This shows the Select Data Source dialog, which lets you edit the source data for your chart.

You can edit the “Chart data range” to change where your chart data comes from… but did you know that there is a quicker way?

Quickly edit chart series data source

Here’s how to do it quickly:

Time Needed : 1 minutes

How to quickly edit the data source of a chart series in Excel

Select the series on that chart you wish to edit
Edit the data range directly in the Formula Bar
This is the second-to-last parameter shown for the series.
Change the range reference to the new data source
This will update the selected chart series to the new data source.

A great time-saving use for this method is when you need to create a new series on an existing chart. You can just copy and paste the existing series, then edit the data range of the new series.

Bonus Tip

Please log in to see the bonus tip.