I read somewhere once that your ability to draw a perfect circle is directly related to your IQ. That is to say, the more perfect your circle, the smarter you are. Well that’s bad news for me. Every time I try to draw a circle I comes out like this…
Well…if you need to draw a perfect circle in Excel, simply hold down the SHIFT key as you draw it. Excel will keep the circle proportional and you’ll look like you have a high IQ.
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This probably works in PowerPoint and Word also, but I haven’t tested that (what with my low IQ and all).
In the same way, holding “alt” while dragging an object creates a grid snap. You can then align several graphs really nicely.
looks like you have copied my circle…
Anyways, I observed that holding your finger steady while drawing circles works best.
Mike…maybe you’re smarter than you think. If I either:
a) zoom your circle waaaaaay out, or
b) zoom your circle waaaaaay in, or
c) close my eyes (which I do a lot),
…then i can’t honestly tell the difference between your circle and X^ 2 + Y^ 2=r^2
This may be a stupid question, but why would you need to “draw” a circle in excel. I have never come across a reason to use one, other than in a pie graph, but then it is created by the wizard.
Arlyn: I’ve used the circle in dashboards and diagrams built in Excel. Not too often though…
This trick really applies to PowerPoint.
andy…I used a couple of circles today to highlight some outliers on a graph.
Mike…when are you going to enable some kind of ‘subscribe to comments’ to your blog? Check out http://www.creative-web-ideas.com/index.php/2010/01/subscribe-to-comments-plugin/
Jeff: Here you go…
http://feeds.feedburner.com/CommentsForBaconBits
Holding the Shift key while drawing a rectangle creates perfect squares as well.