How to Draw a Cartesian Plane in Excel

Using Excel equally a Graphic Organizer:

Making a Coordinate Plane

You volition employ an Excel workbook to create a Cartesian coordinate organization with each quadrant being x 10 x.

Open an Excel workbook. Click on the column heading A . The entire column will highlight. Gyre over to the right until you can run into column heading Z . Concur downwardly your shift key and click on the Z. Y'all should now accept 26 columns selected. Click on the line between whatsoever two column heading letters and elevate to the left until the column width is approximately 2 (xix pixels). When you release the mouse push all 26 columns will exist the same narrow width. This makes each cell approximately square. Whorl back to cavalcade A and click anywhere to remove the highlight color. We will utilize these grid lines as reference points for our coordinate system.

Next we will outline the area of our four quadrants. Click in cell C3 and drag down to cell V22. You could besides sentry the irresolute data in the Proper noun Box until yous see (Excel counts for you lot). With those 400 cells highlighted, click on the down pointing triangle to the correct of the Borders button. From the drib downward carte select the 2nd button on the last row, the one that looks similar a window with 4 panes.

Next you will describe two lines, 1 vertical and one horizontal. These lines will class the X and Y axes. Yous must have the Drawing toolbar open to draw these lines. If the toolbar is not open, go to the View menu, select Toolbars and slide over to Drawing and click once.

Click on the word AutoShapes in the Drawing toolbar, move your cursor to Lines and click one time on the line with two arrow heads. Your cursor changed to a cross hair, the drawing cursor. Start drawing the X axis on the line between 12 and 13 on the row headers, and click and drag to depict a direct line that extends beyond the grid on both sides. To brand a straight line, hold the Shift key down as you draw. While the line is however selected, move your cursor to the Line Style button on the Drawing toolbar and select the thick line labeled 3 pt . Echo this process for the Y axis, starting on the line between column headings L and M .

Numbers volition non become where you want them to on the axes, so we will make the fifth lines upward and over slightly darker. The simplest manner to practice this is to use the Borders toolbar button. Click on the down pointing triangle to the right of the Borders button again, but this fourth dimension click on the line that says Draw Borders .

From the Borders pop-up, click on the down pointing arrow in the Line Mode box and slide downward to the thicker border just below the double border line. Employ the pencil to draw a thick line from one side to the other right on line between rows 7 and 8 , and between 17 and 18 . Repeat this same procedure for the vertical lines betwixt column headers G and H , and Q and R .

The final step to make this fix for classroom use is to depict several small circles to motion onto the plane. Click on the word AutoShapes in the Cartoon toolbar, move your cursor to Bones Shapes and slide over and down to the kickoff shape on row iii, the oval. To describe a perfect circle, hold down the Shift key as you draw. Draw a small circle. After drawing the circumvolve, use the line color button to fill it with colour. There is a small down pointing triangle to the correct of the button. Click on that triangle to select a color.

After filling the circumvolve with color, copy the circumvolve by holding downwardly the Ctrl key and pressing the C key ( Ctrl + C ). After a circle is copied, paste several more than of the circles by holding down the Ctrl key and pressing the V key ( Ctrl + V ) several times. Circles can be moved with the keyboard arrows or by clicking and dragging.

Sample workbook

Let u.s.a. know if you lot have any other ideas for using this feature of Excel. Bill Byles or Susan Brooks