Swap boring budgets and stale statistics for a more visual approach

We all know how well Pages can present newsletters, school reports, letters and brochures. But exciting presentation doesn’t have to stop when it comes to adding figures and percentages to your Pages project.

While it’s sometimes necessary to include a spreadsheet or other numerical representation in your document, it doesn’t have to be the boring kind. Using Pages’ in-built chart creation tool borrowed from iWork’s Numbers, you can quickly turn dull-looking data into stunning charts and even make them three-dimensional for added pizzazz. You can turn a wide range of data into a chart, from budget information and cost analyses through to earnings, valuations and more, and make them fit into the overall design of your project with ease.

Brighten up staid text in Pages with a well-placed 3D chart.

As part of a school or university project, a chart makes your points far clearer than a row of numbers can, enabling you to accurately display information that might otherwise be lost in your layout or ignored by the reader. And you’re not limited to one type of chart either; depending on the data you are displaying you can choose bar charts, line graphs and more to suit your chosen layout in a range of colors and designs.

Charts can be created on the fly in Pages or you can import them from Numbers by copying and pasting between the two apps. You can even copy and paste spreadsheet data from other apps such as Microsoft Excel if you wish.
 
In this guide, we are going to be adding a fairly simple graph to a newsletter document to display the wildlife growth in a specific area over a period of four years. For this purpose, a bar chart works perfectly well – but you’re free to choose whichever graph works best with your own information.

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Create and Edit a 3D Chart in Pages

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  Pick the Perfect Template

  Start by selecting a new template from the Pages template chooser or open an existing document you wish to add your chart to by clicking the Open an Existing File button. If your project has multiple pages, move to the page you wish to add the chart to.

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  Choose a Chart

  Now click on the Charts button from the toolbar at the top of the interface and select a chart type from the drop-down menu. There are a number of 3D charts available, from pie charts to line graphs, but we’re going to choose a 3D bar chart to show a change over time.

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  Add Your Data

  A new chart will now be created and displayed on your page. Don’t worry about how big it is for now – we’ll adjust that later. Start by using the Chart Data Editor to fill in your information, including titles for the data, and add more columns to the chart if you wish.

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  Set Text Wrapping

  From the Inspector pane click on the Wrap tab, making sure your chart is selected. Then check the Object causes wrap box and select the second wrap style from the left. Your text may go a little haywire but we’ll fix that in the next step, so don’t panic.

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  Reduce the Size

  Select your chart and use the square handles to adjust its size so that it fits into the area you have selected for it. You will notice the text wrapping around it so you can pick the perfect size. Now position your chart where you want it to appear on the page.

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  Tweaking the Text

  Using the same technique as in step 5, position the chart’s Legend so that it sits above or below your chart and resize it if need be. If your legend won’t reduce to a small enough space you can adjust its text size by double-clicking on it and pressing command+- together.

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  Pick Your Colors

  You don’t have to stick with the default colors. Select your chart and click on Chart Colors from the Chart tab on the Inspector pane. From here you can pick a new style then drag it on to an area of your chart. You can apply a different color to each data type too.

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  Give it a Spin

  Finally, to perfect the look of your chart on the page, you can rotate it using the 3D Scene control from the Inspector’s Chart tab. Use this to spin your graph and position it how you would like on the page. This technique also helps position the chart within text.

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  Quick Tip

  There are a number of other visual options you can apply to a 3D chart. Try out the Chart Depth and Lighting options from the Chart tab in the Inspector for visual effect, and investigate changing the shape of the bars in your chart.

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