Excel: Formatting Charts in Excel 2010 with Layout

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I try to do most of my chart formatting on the Layout tab of the ribbon.

"œTry" is the important word there.

There are 15 dropdowns on the layout tab that cover the major elements of the chart. So far, so good.

  1. Dropdowns to format the chart.

    Each dropdown leads to a tiny menu with a few popular choices. Sometimes the choices in the menu are useful. Other times, what you really need is not in the menu. However, the bottom item in each menu is for More Choices. Choose this item to get to the Format dialog box with all of the choices.

  2. The label settings that you remember from Excel 2003 are hidden beneath the More Data Label Options.

    I assume that 90% of the time that I go to the Layout tab, I will have to skip the menu choices and go to the More Options choice.