Interactive Charts In Numbers

Numbers lets you create charts that have an extra dimension. You can move through columns of data using a slider or buttons, with the chart changing to reflect the data in each column. This can be useful for showing changes over time.

Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let's take a look at Interactive Charts in Numbers.
I'm using Numbers version 3 and I'm going to show you Interactive Charts.
Regular charts are just static graphics that appear on the screen. You can animate them and have them grow. For instance, you can select this one here and say create a chart, like a 2D chart, and there we go we got a chart. We have all the data from that in one big chart.
But sometimes you have data like this where you want to make it interactive because you have more than one dimension. Here we've got, say, the number of sales in January 2011. I'd love to be able to go and compare 2011 to 2012 to 2013 to see how sales have grown.
So I'm going to select this whole table here, create a chart, but create an interactive chart. Do an interactive bar chart there. I'm going to bring this up and what I get is there is 2011, and 2012, and 2013 in January and there is the number of sales. 
I've got this slider here at the bottom that I can move. See there is February, March, April, etc. So I can move along this bottom here and change the data in the chart so I can kind of see it change over time.
But this isn't quite what I wanted. What I really wanted is to be able to compare years. So I'm going to enter data references here. At the bottom left I can swap things. Now I'm going to get a chart that shows me the entire year of 2011 and then I can go to 2012 and 2013.
You have basically all the same options as you have with the regular chart. Being able to have a Title on, change the Legend, change the Font, things like that. You have a few extra options like you can have Slider and Buttons or just Buttons Only. So you can just use these right here which makes more sense if you are talking about three years.
There are four different styles of interactive chart. You saw there when I created the chart I had four choices. I can change them here. So I can go to Interactive Bar instead of column just to view it that way. I can do a Scatter which doesn't make as much sense for this and I can do a Bubble as well which again doesn't make as much sense for this particular set of data but it is good to know it is here.
Now the big downside to Interactive Charts is when you export them to something else, like say a PDF, they are not going to be interactive anymore. So you have to use them inside of Numbers. But since Numbers is available in IOS and Mac and for PC users via Numbers iCloud then it becomes a little more useful.
But in general it is kind of useful for you to be able to see the change or to be able to show somebody during a presentation where you can bring up Numbers and walk them through a chart.

Comments: 6 Responses to “Interactive Charts In Numbers”

Joel Anderson

10 years ago

Never knew this feature existed. Thanks, Gary!

Seth Rosenblum

Excellent Gary, Thank You!

Gary, end of video 'share w/PC users by using Numbers iCloud.' Is there a post for doing this and creating a link and sharing it? (I presume the PC user goes to the cloud to view and share comment regarding the Numbers interactive charts data.) Does this make sense?

Gary Rosenzweig

Just try it and you'll see. Go to iCloud.com and look at your Numbers documents.

Greg Parry

Thanks, Gary. Will the interactivity be retained if you import the chart into iBooks Author?

No idea. Try it and see. iBooks Author has its own interactivity widgets, so I'm thinking it is better to use those, but I don't use iBooks Author for anything so I don't really know.

Comments Closed.

Interactive Charts In Numbers

Comments: 6 Responses to “Interactive Charts In Numbers”

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