If you’re a finance professional, you know Excel is crucial. Excel is key to everything, from crunching numbers to making complex models. But sometimes, you need to clean up your sheets by ditching charts. Below, we’ll explore why managing charts matters and how to remove them easily.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Charts are a powerful way to visualize data trends and insights in financial analysis. They help you quickly identify patterns, compare performance, and communicate complex information to clients and stakeholders. Some of the most common types of charts used in finance include:
In the fast-paced world of investment banking, clear and uncluttered presentations are essential. Charts can make your reports more engaging and persuasive, but they can also clutter your worksheets if not appropriately managed.
Gain access to 100+ shortcuts, formula auditing visualizations, easy Excel-to-PowerPoint linking and productivity tools to help you accelerate financial modeling and presentations.
There are several scenarios where you might need to remove charts from your Excel worksheets:
To illustrate the process of removing charts, let’s consider a simplified financial report of a hypothetical company’s quarterly earnings over three years. The dataset includes the following columns:
In investment banking, the abovementioned data types are typically visualized using charts to track financial performance over time. For example, you might create a line chart showing revenue and expenses by quarter or a bar chart comparing net income across fiscal years.
Remove All Charts From Worksheet
Try Macabacus for free to accelerate financial modeling in Excel.
Need to get rid of a chart? Here’s how:
Step 1: Click the chart, and a border will pop up.
Step 2: Hit ‘Delete’ or right-click and ‘Cut’.
That’s it! The chart’s gone from your sheet.
If you have several charts to remove, you can delete them all at once:
Step 1: Press and hold ‘Ctrl’ on your keyboard.
Step 2: Click the charts you want out, and they’ll get a border.
Step 3: Selected all your charts? Hit ‘Delete’ or right-click, then ‘Cut’.
The above method works great for large financial models with lots of charts.
For those working with large financial datasets, manually removing charts can be a real drag. But fear not—VBA (Visual Basic for Applications) is here to rescue you from such a tedious task. VBA is like having a trusty sidekick for Excel, helping you automate all your repetitive chores. With just a bit of code, VBA can swiftly clear out all the charts from your worksheet, leaving you more time to tackle the real challenges.
Here’s a simple VBA script that deletes all charts in the active worksheet:
Sub DeleteAllCharts()
Dim chartObj As ChartObject
For Each chartObj In ActiveSheet.ChartObjects
chartObj.Delete
Next chartObj
End Sub
To use the above script:
Step 1: Open your Excel file and press Alt+F11 to access the VBA Editor.
Step 2: Once you can access the VBA Editor, click Insert > Module.
Step 3: Paste the code into the module.
Step 4: Close the VBA editor and go back to your Excel sheet.
Step 5: To open the Macro dialog box, Press Alt+F8.
Step 6: From the list, choose DeleteAllCharts and click Run.
The script efficiently goes through each chart in the sheet and deletes them, saving you precious time and effort.
Before sharing your worksheets with those inside and outside your organization, you often need to prepare and “sanitize” them for various reasons. You may want to protect personal or proprietary information, confirm the integrity of your workbooks, or clean up the overall appearance or formatting.
Macabacus’ Prepare to Share tool allows you to perform all the abovementioned operations and many more. To proceed, open your Excel file. Navigate to the Macabacus > Prepare to Share menu and select ‘Remove charts’. You can do several operations all at once, on either the original workbook or a copy of the active workbook (recommended). Check out the video below for more:
Before performing any bulk deletions in Excel, it’s crucial to back up your financial data. While removing charts doesn’t typically affect the underlying data, it’s always better to be safe than sorry. Before running any VBA scripts, be sure to either save a copy of your original file or create a new version.
It’s also important to note that VBA scripts can sometimes encounter issues, especially if your worksheet has complex formatting or protected cells. If you run into problems, try the troubleshooting tips below:
Managing chart elements is an essential skill for investment bankers working with financial reports and models in Excel. Whether you need to remove a single, multiple, or all charts in a worksheet, this blog post outlines various methods for efficient presentations and secure data management.
To gain proficiency in chart management, practice the above steps on the provided quarterly earnings dataset. As you become more comfortable with them, you can apply them to your financial models, saving time and ensuring that your visualizations are always accurate and up-to-date.
Remember, clear and concise communication is critical in finance. By mastering the art of chart management in Excel, you can create compelling reports that drive better decision-making and help you succeed in your career.
For those looking to enhance their productivity in Microsoft Office further, consider exploring the various tools Macabacus offers. Designed for finance and banking teams, Macabacus provides robust features that streamline spreadsheet formatting, formula auditing, and presentation creation, ensuring accuracy and consistency across your documents.
Gain access to 100+ shortcuts, formula auditing visualizations, easy Excel-to-PowerPoint linking and productivity tools to help you accelerate financial modeling and presentations.