Importing an X-Y plot created in Excel into Word

Importing an X-Y plot created in Excel into Word
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Importing an X-Y plot created in Excel into Word

Before the plot can be "cut & pasted" into a Microsoft Word document, a few other changes can be made to it. Firstly, the whole chart area should be formatted. The default is to include a thin grey line around the edge of the chart are. Since a boundary border can be added in Word if required, it is probably best to set the chart area border to no line before exporting it. Right mouse click on the edge area of chart will bring up a menu with the option of Format Chart Area... as shown below:

Within the sub-menu, choose No fill within the Fill options and No line within the Border Color optons.

The final step is to choose the shape and layout of the plot. There are several parameters that need to be considered: page size, orientation, and margins. First click on the Excel tab labelled Page Layout. In this example, the page size and orientation have already been set to A4 landscape so the final option is to set the chart margins. Clicking on the margins icon, will bring up a menu that allows for custom margins: for plots, all the margins can be set to zero unless one wants to change the aspect ratio. PXRD data is normally plotted in landscape format.

Once all changes are made, the whole chart can be copied and pasted into a Word document. Word will offer several choices for "paste" including picture format. The advantage of picture format is that the object is no longer linked to the original spreadsheet, though some may perceive this to be a disadvantage in some circumstances (e.g. if the data plotted in the spreadsheet may change at a later date). The chart can also be edited when pasted in using other formats - again there are advanatages and disadvantages to this.

In picture format, the plot may appear large, but it is simple matter to right-click on the plot to access the size and position menu as shown below:

In the example shown below, the page size was set to A4 and the left and right margins in the Word document were set at 2.5 cm so to fill the full page width, the plot was set to be 16 cm wide (with the aspect ratio maintained).

The text used for the plot should appear to be of a similar size to that used for the body of the text in the document. It may appear very slightly smaller (by 1 or 2 pt), but it should not be larger. If the text is the wrong size, it can be changed in Excel and

Ideally, it should be given a caption below the figure, e.g. Figure 1. PXRD data of a sample of standard hydroxyapatite sample in a 0.7 mm capillary measured on a Stoe Stadi-P diffractometer with Cu Kα₁ X-rays.

PXRD Material Index

Author(s): Jeremy Karl Cockcroft