Formatting a Chart Title in Excel 2007:-

By default, a chart with more than one series is created without any title, as shown in the upper-right chart in the Figure (given below).

To add a title, you use the Chart Title drop-down on the Layout tab. Your choices are a centered overlay title or a title above the chart. When you add the title above the chart, Excel has to shrink the plot area to make room for the title. See the lower-right chart in the Figure (given below). If your title fits, using a centered overlay title leaves more space for the title, but there is the chance that the words in your title and the points plotted in the series will collide, as they do in the chart shown on the left in the Figure (given below).



(Excel offers two built-in locations for chart titles.)


Typing a Title

After you select a title location from the drop-down, Excel adds the generic “Chart Title” placeholder text to the top of your chart. The title is selected by default, so you can immediately start typing the actual title. You see the typed characters appear in the formula bar. When you press the Enter key, Excel replaces “Chart Title” with the words you typed.

Moving a Title

You single-click a title to select it. Then you move the mouse pointer so that it is above the outline of the title. When the mouse pointer changes to a four-headed arrow, you click and drag the title to a new location.

Note that the outline contains only four handles instead of the usual eight. This means you cannot use the handles to resize the title bounding box. However, you do have some control over the size of the title bounding box. If you press the Enter key in the middle of the title, you will force the title bounding box to become vertically larger.

Formatting a Title with the Mini Toolbar

You triple-click a title in order to select all the words in the title. When you move your mouse pointer slightly up and to the right, the mini toolbar appears, allowing you to select the font and other formatting to use in the title. See in the Figure (given below).



(You select text in a title and then move the mouse up and to the right, toward the nearly invisible mini toolbar, to make the toolbar appear.)

Formatting a Title with the Home Ribbon Tab

If getting the mini toolbar to display is too frustrating for you, you can use the Home ribbon instead. To do so, you select characters in the title and then display the Home tab of the ribbon. You can use the icons in the Font and Alignment groups to format the title.

More Title Options

You can right-click a title and then choose Format Chart Title to access the Format dialog. This dialog offers Fill, Border Color, Border Styles, Shadow, 3-D Format, and Alignment sections. The Shadow section gives you micro-control over the shadow transparency, size, blur, angle, and distance. The Alignment tab allows you to rotate the text in 1 degree increments.