Excel Video 132 continues our discussion about getting charts onto dashboards. In the last Excel Video, we moved a chart onto the dashboard. You may choose instead to copy and paste the chart onto the dashboard. The pasted chart is still linked to live data, but now you have a copy of the chart on the dashboard and a copy next to your data. The tradeoff here is that even though changes to your data change both charts, the charts are only linked to the data, not to each other. If you change the formatting on one chart, the formatting on the other chart does not change.
I’ll also show you how to unlink a chart created with the camera tool. If you want to show historical data on your dashboard, one way to do it is to have a linked chart next to last month’s chart that is not linked and therefore still shows last month’s data. If you copy a picture created by the camera and paste it as a picture, you’ll lose the link so when the data changes, the pasted chart will stay the same.
There are times when moving charts, using the camera, copying charts, and unlinking charts may all be appropriate and helpful on your dashboard. Now you have some tools to choose from depending on what you want your charts to do.
