After creating a new excel document, type your first piece of data into cell A1. You want to make sure that you enter your first x value into cell A1, as Excel will default column A to the x-axis and column B to the y-axis when you are ready to graph.

In this case, my first X measurement was 10. My subsequent measurements after this one were all done in incriments of 10, like in experiment 1. I don't want to have to type out all those numbers, so I'm going to take advantage of Excel's fomula tool. For a formula to work, I first have to type an equal sign followed by my formula. In this case, I just want to add 10 to the previous cell's number. So I type =(A1+10) to tell Excel to add 10 to the value in cell A1. Then I hit enter.


Here is what it looks like after I've hit enter. Since 20 is 10 added to 10, the value of cell A1, I know Excel computed my formula correctly. Now comes the time saving part.


Look at the small black box where the green arrow is pointing. Place your cursor here and click.


Now, drag down in the direction of the arrow as many cells as you need. If you took 10 measurements, drag down for a total of 10 cells. For my example data, I only took 8 measurements, so I'm going to drag down to cell 8. This is not crucial, as you can always click on that box again, in any cell with a formula, and drag it down farther if needed.


Here is what my sheet looks like now that I have dragged my formula down to cell 8. If you look up at the formula bar, you'll see that Excel has carried my formula all the way down. Cell 8 is the one selected, and the formula reads "=A7+10" which is exactly what it should read.


Now, in column B, I need to enter the rest of my data. Since there is no formula for my column B data, I just need to type each value in by hand until they're all entered. Since I have 8 values in column A, I should have 8 in column B.


Now, it's time to graph. Click on the chart wizard icon, shown where the green arrow is pointing.


This will open the chart wizard. For this graph, and pretty much all graphs you'll do in Chemistry, you want to select "XY (scatter)" as your chart. The top default subtype is fine, so you don't need to change that.


This is the screen that you will now see. Excel has take the data I had listed and automatically put it into a graph. Note that, as explained earlier, Excel has placed Column A on the x-axis and column B on the y-axis. Now, rather than clicking on "next" you want to click on the tab at the top that says "series."


The Series tab will take you to this screen. Here, again, you can see that Column A is the x-axis, and Column B is the y-axis. You can also see that Excel has made a legend for your data called "Series 1." This legend is too generic, so we want to give it a name.


You can see that Series 1 is the selected region, as it is highlighted in blue. To name this series, you just need to click in the box labeled "name" above the x-axis box, and type a name. For this tutorial, I'm simply going to call my data "Sample Data." Once I have typed that I click next.


Now it's time to define the values of my x-axis and my y-axis. I simply click in each box and give the axes a descriptive title. You should have something more informative than what I have, which is just X Values and Y Values.


One more thing you need to do before leaving this screen is give your graph a title. Excel will want to call your graph what you named your "Series 1" data, but this is not usually a good title for your graph. Typically, graphs are given a title in the form of "Y vs X" where whatever label you have given the y-axis is "Y" and whatever label you have given the x-axis is "X." So, click in the Chart Title box and rename your graph in the Y vs X format. Then click next.


Now Excel will ask you where you want to place your graph. It's default is as an object in your active sheet. Here, our active sheet is "Sheet 1." This really, honestly, does not matter if you make it a new sheet of it's own or keep it in the sheet you are working in. I would reccomend keeping in the sheet, however, so you don't forget which graph goes with which data set when making more than one graph.


Here is your completed graph in your sheet. There is one more thing we want to do, though.


Double click somewhere in the grey background of your graph, as indicated by the green arrow. This will bring up the "Format Plot Area" menu. Click on the white box, shown by the blue arrow. This will change the background of your graph to white. You may think this is a trivial step, but it is actually not. With the grey background, it is often hard to see the data points when the graph is printed. Especially when it is printed in grey-scale and the data points are in black and white versus color. Click OK.


Here is what your graph will now look like. Congrats, you've now finished a complete graph on Excel.