Excelling at Excel: Save chart designs for easy re-use

Once you get a chart designed the way you like it (say, the Gantt chart layout we explored last week), it's easy to re-use it with new data. Click to select the chart you want to use as a template and then go to the Design tab and click the Save As Template button:

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By default, your template files will be saved in the Microsoft, Templates, Charts folder - which is good. Saving here will add them automatically to your Change Chart Type, Templates section for easy selection later:

Now, when you select Excel data you want to make into a chart and click to the Insert tab, pick ANY of the chart types and then click down to the All Chart Types button to find your template(s) in the My Templates section:

Suzanne