Constructing a Graph with Microsoft Excel
Gary L. Cates, Ph.D.
Setup The Data
1. Open Microsoft Excel
2. In cell A1 Type “Session”
3. In cell B1 Type “Baseline” This will be where you type in baseline data only.
4. In Cell C1 Type “Treatment 1” This will be where you type in Treatment 1 data only
5. In Cell D1 Type “Treatment 2” This will be where you type in treatment 2 data only
6. In Cell A2 Type “1”
7. In Cell A3 Type “2”
8. Highlight Cell A2 & A3 by clicking on cell A2 with the left mouse button and then holding it down as you drag on to
cell A3 and then let go.
9. Grab onto the bottom right corner of cell A3 by left mouse clicking on it and holding it. Now while holding drag your
cursor to cell A21 and then let go. This should have filled in all of your cells under the session column with a sequential
list of numbers to represent session number.
10. In cell B2 type “#N/A” and hit enter.
11. Now right mouse click on cell B2 and choose “copy”.
12. Highlight all of the remaining cells (B2-B21 through D2-D21) and then right mouse click and choose paste.
You should now have “#N/A” in all of the cells. You now have a worksheet completed to graph baseline and treatment
data for two treatments. Now let’s have some real fun and input data.
Construct the Graph
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Click on the “insert” tab and choose “Scatter with straight lines” from the “charts menu.
Right mouse click on the chart and choose “Move chart”.
Select “As new sheet” and give it a name (e.g. Graph).
Now click on this new sheet and right mouse click on the blank graph and choose “select data”
Click on the tab in the spreadsheet that has your data in it. This will open up the data and allow you to select what
data you want graphed. Be sure that your cursor in the “Chart data range field is after an = sign.
In this case the data you want to graph are the Baseline data for the individual student you isolated. Simply left
mouse click and hold and drag down through data points (A1:A20)
You also will want to graph the intervention data. Simply click “add” on the popup menu. In the next pop up
dialogue box put your cursor in the Y values field and clear out anything that is in there. Now go back to your
data tab and select all intervention data. (B1:B20). Click Ok.
Repeat steps 4-7 for each "phase" you wish to graph data for.
Right mouse click on the series legend at the right of the graph and choose delete.
Now click once in the middle of the graph. In the main menu fields at the top of Microsoft excel select the “lay
out” tab. Select the “Gridlines” icon, go to “primary horizontal gridlines” and choose “show none”.
Under the same “lay out” tab choose “horizontal axis title”, “primary horizontal axis title” then “title below axis”.
You will notice that your x axis now says “axis title” if you click there you can change it to read whatever you
specify (e.g. benchmarking period).
Right mouse click on this axis title and you can choose “font” to change the font to 12 pt. and any other fancy
thing you prefer and click ok.
Repeat these instructions (steps 10 and 11) for the primary vertical axis and put in a “Rotated Title”.
Right Click on the y axis and choose “format axis”. Click “Fixed” for the major unit and change it to 5. For the
maximum unit also change that to “fixed” and change it to 100.
Right click on the x axis and choose “format axis”. Click fixed for the major unit and change it to 1.
In the “format” option on the main menu you can choose among many shapes. The shape we are looking for is an
arrow. By selecting arrow we can draw an arrow to point at series 1 and another arrow to point to series 2.
Under “layout” then “insert” you can choose the “text box” icon. Click on your graph and type inside this new
text box “Baseline”. Repeat this step but in the second text box type “intervention”. If you need to move the
textbox you can simply grab it and move it/resize it.
18. To remove the line connecting the two B phases simply select the first datum in the second baselien phase by
clicking on it twice with a pause between clicks. Right mouse click on the highlighted datum and choose "format
data point". Go to line color and choose "none". Click ok.
19. To add the phase line, simply go to the "Insert" menu and choose the "Shapes" icon. You will then be able to
choose the line tool which looks like a diagonal line. Once selected you can put your cursor at the top of the
graph, hold down the left moust button and drag the cursor down to the X axis.
20. Right mouse click on the line you just drew and choose "format shape". You can then change line color, style, etc.
It is customary to make your phase lines dashed.
Congratulations!
Depending on the design you are using your data entry should look like the following.
A-B-C-etc. Design
Alternating Treatments Design
Note 1: You need a column for data entry for every "phase".
Note 2: If you were to enter data in C1 instead of #N/A you will see that your data end up overlapping for each session.
Note 3: If you do not put #N/A in a field you may get a graph that interprets empty cells as a "0".
Note 4: If you need more than 2 treatments graphed, simply add a column titled "treatment3" etc. and then right mouse
click on the graph and choose "select data" and then "add". You can then repeat step 8 above.
Note 1: Your graph should look something like this before removing the line connecting the two baseline phases.
Note 2: To change the color, size, marker of any of your data series just right click on the series and choose "format
series". You will see a variety of options. Try many of them to see what they can do for your graphs.