Appendix G: Using Excel to Create a Graph with Error Bars

Creating a graph

• 1
  Enter your data in an Excel spreadsheet as shown in Fig.1.
  

  Figure 1: Entering your data

• 2
  Label your columns with names and units.
• 3
  Highlight the data that you want to graph, as shown in Fig. 2.
  

  Figure 2: Highlighting data to be graphed

• 4
  Click the Insert tab at the top left of the Excel window (or click the chart icon in the horizontal tool bar).
  • •
    Click the "Scatter" icon.
  • •
    Click the picture of a graph with just the points (no lines) as shown in Fig. 3.
  

  Figure 3: Choosing your graph

• 5
  Your graph should appear as seen in Fig. 4.
  

  Figure 4: Inserting your graph

Adding error bars

• 6
  To add error bars, right click one of the points in the graph.
  • •
    Select "format data series".
  • •
    A window as shown in Fig. 5 will appear.
  

  Figure 5: Error bar menu

• 7
  Click on the 'Y Error Bars' tab if it is not already selected.
  • •
    Click 'Both' for display option and 'Custom' for error amount.
  • •
    The cursor will automatically appear in the '+' next to 'Custom'.
  • •
    Select cells C2 through C7 and you will see these cells listed in the '+' box for the positive errors for each data point. See Fig. 6.
  

  Figure 6: Entering values for error bars

• 8
  Select the '-' error bar box and once again select cells C2 through C7.
  • •
    Click 'OK' to complete this step.
  • •
    Your graph will now have error bars as shown in Fig. 7.
  

  Figure 7: Graph with error bars added

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