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AR Tutorials - Adding Charts To Your Posts

By
Services for Real Estate Pros with RealSatisfied

Google Spreadsheet Bar GraphMore often than not, numerical data is best presented visually, in a chart.

There's no question, a good chart can have tremendous visual impact and make boring data come alive.

So, a good 3d bar graph or pie chart can really help when it comes to illustrating numbers. Stephanie Edwards-Musa wanted to know if there was an easy way to get create chart graphics for inclusion in posts here on ActiveRain.

There is.

Google To The Rescue

The recently updated spreadsheet application from Google has a very cool feature that allows you to export charts to an image file (PNG) to use wherever you see fit. The graphic you see here in this post was created using a Google spreadsheet. Here is a link to the actual Tom And Jerry spreadsheet.

The video simply walks through the steps required to go from data to chart to graphic. It's ridiculously simple. And, the tool gives you visual feedback on the changes you make to your chart as you go.

Here's the video:


And For My Fellow MAC Users Out There... iWork's Numbers has amazing charting features.

iWork 08 Numbers Chart

Example 3d Chart from Apple's iWork '08.

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Jeff Turner
RealSatisfied - Santa Clarita, CA

Mrs. Lussier... if I'd have known, I would have taken my laptop down to the bar in Las Vegas and showed you right there and then. I'm honored to play any role at all in your continued success!!!

Oct 07, 2008 03:54 PM
inactive AR account
Dayton, OH

>I would have taken my laptop down to the bar in Las Vegas and showed you right there and then.

 

Yes, I believe that. Exactly why I didn't tell you! ;-D

Oct 08, 2008 02:14 AM
Jeff Turner
RealSatisfied - Santa Clarita, CA

You are a smart woman. :)

Oct 08, 2008 03:05 AM
Paul S. Henderson, REALTOR®, CRS
Fathom Realty Washington LLC - Tacoma, WA
South Puget Sound Washington Agent/Broker!

Jeff I have a problem, I don't know if I can incorporate all the great info in my AR posts...

Oct 11, 2008 11:07 AM
Jeff Turner
RealSatisfied - Santa Clarita, CA

Paul, you're killin' me right now. :)

Oct 11, 2008 11:27 AM
Jon Wnoroski
America's 1st Choice RH Realty Co., Inc. - Green, OH
Summit County Realtor

Thanks for the great tool.  I'm playing with it and will perfect my charts ... in time.  I can see where this will have great applications for blogging.

Oct 12, 2008 02:23 AM
Mark Passerby
HDhat.com - Lansing, MI
HDhat.com - 517-896-4376

I oversee 7 real estate offices and provide our agents with a broad range of statistics and graphs so I wanted to suggest a great site for making fantastic "totally free" graphs of any data you might put together http://nces.ed.gov/nceskids/createagraph/default.aspx 

You can export in various formats but the most useful is the SVG export option for those of you with Adobe Illustrator experience you will be able to open the SVG in Illustrator and manipulate each and every part of the charts, graphs and data to look exactly as you want it. 

SVG(Scalable Vector Graphics) The fantastic thing about the SVG option on this free graph site is that the graph is a Vector which means you can scale it up to the size of a dining table if you like with no loss in the print resolution.  There are some free SVG editors out there as well. 

Mark Passerby
www.PovVideotours.com

Oct 14, 2008 06:02 AM
Jeff Turner
RealSatisfied - Santa Clarita, CA

I find it amazing that this post is almost a year old and still getting comments at this pace.

Oct 14, 2008 08:18 AM
Jeff Turner
RealSatisfied - Santa Clarita, CA

Jon, I think the integration in the google docs suite makes it a winner.

Oct 14, 2008 08:18 AM
Sandy McAlpine
RE/MAX EXECUTIVE - Cornelius, NC
Search Lake Norman Homes For Sale - Lake Norman NC

I never realized that google docs could do that! I am trying to make my blog posts stand out more and have more visuals and this is GREAT!!!

Nov 25, 2008 12:16 AM
Duncan Boan
Century 21 South Island Realty - Victoria, BC

Yesterday I struggled with Google Charts for a couple of hours to get a reasonably nice looking bar chart displayed. Today I found this post - wish I had known about it earlier, because by comparison, creating charts with Google Spreadsheets is a real time saver for static information. I think Google Charts (and a little programming) would be the way to go if your information changes and you want your chart to update dynamically.

Dec 03, 2008 12:49 AM
William James Walton Sr.
WEICHERT, REALTORS® - Briotti Group - Waterbury, CT
Greater Waterbury Real Estate

Excellent! I was wondering why I couldn't just paste the carts for my market reports into my blog. This will help me immensely. Thanks for the help!

Mar 27, 2009 12:05 PM
Pam Dent
Gayle Harvey Real Estate, Inc. - Charlottesville, VA
REALTOR® - Charlottesville Virginia Homes / Horse

Jeff - I just did an AR search on making charts and this came up.  I want to start adding charts and graphs to my market reports and never knew how.  Thanks for the tutorial.

Mar 27, 2009 11:45 PM
Ginger Moore
Wilkinson & Associates Realty - Gastonia, NC

Hi and thanks for the great post! I will have to add some charts to my posts in the near future.  Very informative. thx again!

Jul 05, 2009 02:47 AM
Suzanne Hinton
ReMax Premier Realty - Overland Park, KS
North Johnson County KS Real Estate Expert

Thank you Jeff.  I was again considering putting some charts on my posts this evening and I remembered what a great tutorial you had presented several months ago about how to simply do so.  I have watched it again and will use your instruction to start adding charts.  I am again very appreciative of your sharing your expertise. 

Aug 22, 2009 11:48 AM
Tamara Inzunza
Realty One Group Capital - Alexandria, VA
Close-In Alexandria and Arlington Living

I finally created my first chart using this tutorial!!!!!  I had bookmarked this post sometime ago, and today finally got around to playing around with this.  Now I feel more comfortable talking about market stats on my blog.  Thanks so much Jeff!!!

Oct 24, 2009 08:39 AM
Betsy Schuman Dodek
Washington Fine Properties - Washington DC Area Real Estate - Potomac, MD
SearchPotomacHomes.com

This is great stuff, thank you!

Feb 12, 2010 10:24 PM
Cheryl Ritchie
RE/MAX Leading Edge www.GoldenResults.com - Huntingtown, MD
Southern Maryland 301-980-7566

I am learning from this several years after you posted it! Geez! I am learning how to do Excel Charts in Active Rain tonight so this caught my eye also.

Apr 24, 2010 11:47 AM
Cheryl Ritchie
RE/MAX Leading Edge www.GoldenResults.com - Huntingtown, MD
Southern Maryland 301-980-7566

Several years later I am learning these google graphs and excel graphs for blog posts but that shows you the power of posts that stay out there working for you.

Apr 24, 2010 12:07 PM
Inna Ivchenko
Barcode Properties - Encino, CA
Realtor® • Green • GRI • HAFA • PSC Calabasas CA

Believe it or not, but I never used Iwork.

Bookmarked and going to try tomorrow.

Thanks for the advice!

Jun 22, 2015 06:52 PM
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