Excel Video 93 gets even fancier by adding a scroll bar right above the chart that automatically controls the number of columns in the chart. To get the scroll bar and other tools, you need to add the Developer tab to your ribbon. I’ll show you how to add that, and then it’s just a matter of selecting the control you want and choosing the settings appropriately.
For the scroll bar, we can control the current, minimum, and maximum values as well as how fast the value changes when we click. The key is to link the scroll bar to the cell we want to adjust, in our case, G14. You can use the scroll bar for a variety of charts, but you can also use it to control cells in regular spreadsheets. You could easily set up a scroll bar to change a key assumption in a budget spreadsheet, for example. It’s great that Excel gives you this much control and you haven’t had to learn any macros or programming.
Please note that when I say in the video that you don’t need the range of cells around G14 any more, I should clarify that you don’t need to show the cells around G14. You still need the cells to make the scroll bar work, but you don’t have put them front and center. You can hide those cells, make the font the same color as the cell background to make them invisible, etc. Once you’re ready for prime time, you only need to show the scroll bar. Tricks like this will make your charts look fantastic.
