Rotating most slide objects in PowerPoint is an easy
thing to do. You simply select the object to rotate — then, click the Free Rotate tool and choose
the degree of rotation.
Rotating charts, however, is a bit more complex than rotating other objects.
When you select a chart, the rotate tools are dimmed and therefore unavailable. Nevertheless,
you can rotate a chart in PowerPoint by rotating the plot area to change the angle from which
you view the plotted series. Consider the following example:
This charts lists quarterly results beginning with the 1st quarter and
ending with the 4th quarter. You can rotate this chart in 3-D to "view" it from many angles.
Assume you wanted to rotate the chart on this slide: you would just complete
the following steps:
To rotate a chart in PowerPoint
- Open the PowerPoint presentation that contains the chart to rotate and navigate to the correct
slide.
- Double-click on the chart you want to rotate.
- From the PowerPoint main menu, select Chart > 3-D View. The 3-D View dialog
appears. This dialog allows you to change many aspects of the chart view.
- If you wanted the chart to rotate so that the 4th quarter results were listed first — on
the left — you would enter 180 in the Rotation box. This would rotate the chart 180 degrees.
The chart would then appear as follows.
You can use this dialog to rotate a chart in other ways as well.
- Enter a rotation degree (0 to 360) in the Rotation box to rotate the chart as you
desire.
- You can also click the left or right Rotation Buttons to rotate the plot area 10
degrees at a time. You can observe the results in the Preview box.
- Check the Right angle axes checkbox to keep the X and Y axes at a right angle. If
the Right angle axes check box is cleared, the Perspective setting becomes available.
- You use the Elevation setting to adjust the "bird's eye" view of the chart.
- Click Apply to see the results on the actual chart without closing the dialog box.
- When you are finished with the changes, choose OK.
Basics
PowerPoint
