Excel Chart: How to Clip Picture Background into Non-Regular Shape in Plot Area

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Yesterday, a friend sent me a message and demonstrated how to display an no-regular picture background in plot area. As we all know, it's easy and quick to fill plot area with a rectangle picture in all version of Excel. But it's very difficult to clip the picture into a non-regular shape. This friend's ideal is some creative even though it's not very complex. I review some magazines and find an example for this scenario.



I collect some data from newspaper and practice his ideal. The and get the following chart.

Prerequisite: Prepare Data.
Suppose we have the following data. Column B is pseudo CPI (Customer Price Index), which becomes higher and higher recently. Column C is our buy capability. It looks mismatch with the increase of CPI. Where is our money?

Step 1: Prepare two auxiliary data as area chart.
Column D is the auxiliary data, which will be created as a shape to cover the picture background. In fact, we all know, we cannot create a non-regular picture background directly. But we can create some no-regular shapes and overlap them over the background picture. The result background will displayed as non-regular.

Select column $A1-$D6 and insert a stacked area into your workbook. The area chart looks like:

Step 2: Plot the Column C & the auxiliary area chart to the secondary axis.
Select the area chart matching with column C and column D and plot them to the secondary axis.




And then limit both the primary & secondary vertical axis to [0-100].Your chart will become the left picture. Select the red one and change its fill to transparent.

Step 3: Add real data into the chart.
The real data will be created as a scatter line chart. Select column B, C again and insert them into the draft chart. Choose series A and change chart's type to scatter line chart.

Step 4: Change plot area’s and all area charts’ background.

Step 5: Add special mark to line chart.
Prepare the following icon. Select the first icon and press Ctrl+C to copy it to clipboard. Select the CPI line and press Ctrl+V to paste the icon as it's mark icon. Do the same operation for the other one.

Step 6: beautify it with Orange + Green theme.
Prepare the following icon. Select the first icon and press Ctrl+C to copy it to clipboard. Select the CPI line and press Ctrl+V to paste the icon as it's mark icon. Do the same operation for the other one.