Instructions on how to graph your plant's growth in Microsoft Excel are below. These files may be helpful:
1. Open Microsoft Excel
- Save your document into your folder on the student network before you go further!
2. Enter in the dates in column A
- Important: Skip the upper left corner (cell A1)
- Type the first date in A2, the next day in the calendar in A3, the following day in A4
- Select those three boxes and then grab the little square in the lower right corner and pull it down so you have all the dates when you took readings.
3. Enter the header in Row 1 – This will be each stem
- In box B1, type Stem A
- In Box C1, type Stem B
- And so on….
4. Enter the data
- Enter your data into the right box for the date you took the reading and the correct stem.
- Just put the NUMBER in the box (8, not 8mm, for example).
- Leave the boxes blank for the days when you have no data (weekends, etc.) and for the days when that stem didn’t exist.
5. Make the graph
- Click in the lower right corner of your data table and drag up to the upper left corner so it’s all selected.
- Click the Chart Wizard icon on the toolbar – it’s next to the question mark.
- Under Chart Type, click Line, then click Next
- Click Next on the screen that shows a mini chart
Now enter in your chart title and labels.
- Title: Plant Growth by [type your name here]
- Category (X axis): leave this blank
- Value (Y axis): Height (mm)
- Click Next – it will ask you where to put the chart – choose As Object in Sheet 2
6. Refine the graph
- Resize: Grab the upper left corner and drag it up to the corner of the page to make it bigger. You can grab other sides to make it taller or wider too.
- Make lines connected: Go to the toolbar at top and go to Tools > Options then click on the Chart tab and click Interpolated. Click OK.
- Change fonts: Right-click on areas where you want to change fonts along the axes, in the title, or in the legend to choose Format Axis or Format Legend or Format Title. Click on the Font tab and choose font size of 8 or 10 and UNcheck the Autoscale box. You can also choose alignment and change the text orientation to vertical if you like. Click OK.
- Make plot area white: Right click on the grey background of the graph and choose Format Plot Area. In the Area section, click on the little white box. Click OK.