Creating a Graph using OpenOffice

Displaying Spreadsheet Data as a Graph or Chart in OpenOffice

Sometimes, it is more useful to display data graphically: for this reason, the OpenOffice spreadsheet module allows you to transform numeric data into graphs or charts. In this section, we will use the spreadsheet updated in the previous section on spreadsheet formatting as an example. Open the file using:

File->Open

Select the data that you want to graph - including the headings:

Select raw data to create a chart from

Now select the following:

Insert->Chart

Select Insert -> Chart option

A wizard will open up, displaying the available chart/graph types:

Chart wizard in OpenOffice

Click "Finish" to select the default chart type (a bar chart):

The default bar chart created by the Wizard

This looks good, but the legend is superfluous, so let's remove it by clicking over the whitespace on the graph image and select "Delete Legend":

Right click the white space and choose to delete the legend

Now, grab the bottom right corner and drag it out until you can read all the values on the x axis:

Enlarge the image so you can see all the values on the x axis

To add a title, click over the graph area and choose "Insert Titles..":

Choose to insert a title

Type in the required title text and click "OK":

Add the text of the title

Right click one of the bars in the chart and select "Insert Data Labels":

Right click a bar and select Insert Data Labels

The bar chart should now look as follows:

How the final bar chart looks

However, we now decide that this data is better represented by a pie chart: simply right click over the chart and choose "Chart Type..":

Right click over the graph and choose Chart Type

Select the exploded pie chart and click "OK":

Select a pie chart type

But now we need the legend (key), so right click the white space around the pie chart and select "Insert Legend":

Select the Insert Legend option

Finally, it would be nice to have the pie values shown in percentages, so double-click over the graph area, then right click one of the pie segments and choose "Format Data Labels.." option:

Select the Format Data Labels option

Select the "Show value as percentage" options and deselect the "Show value as number" option before clicking "OK":

Select the Display Percentages option

The pie chart should now look as follows:

How the final pie chart looks

Finally, Save the file using CTRL+S or File → Save:

Spreadsheet File Save

Once saved the application can be exited, using File → Exit or CTRL+Q: