Adding charts to pivot tables

You can chart data that is produced from a pivot table. Having both a summary of the data, and a chart is a way of further exploring and coming to an understanding of the data you have. Using the GRAIN data, here’s a simple example of how it works.

Once again, create a basic pivot table which shows the amount of land purchased in each country: drag ‘Landgrabbed’ into the Row Fields and ‘Hectares’ into the Data Fields. Here’s a sample of how the data will appear:

First, sort the data so the largest land deal is at the top of the list:

1. Select cells B4 to A69 (in that order).
2. Click the “Sort Descending” button in the spreadsheet toolbar (it’s a little ‘up’ arrow).

Second, add a chart:

1. The data should still be selected from when you filtered it.
2. In the top menu, go to Insert → Chart
3. The Chart Wizard window will pop-up. The chart it will choose is a Vertical Bar Graph. Don’t change a thing, just select Finish and you’ll get this dense chart:

Third, refine the chart to show only the 10 countries where the most land has been acquired:

1. By hiding rows in the pivot table, we can change what data is shown in the chart.
2. Select rows 14 to 70. In the top menu, go to Format → Row → Hide. The chart will change to the below, which is far easier to grasp:

A quick task

Try to create a pivot table with a chart showing which investors have acquired the most land.