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Have you seen charts that were not filled with solid color fills or geometric patterns, but rather with pictures? For instance, if you wanted to show how the export of grapes has increased over the years, your column chart would have all columns filled with pictures of grapes stacked one over the other? The good thing is that PowerPoint allows you to do just that within your charts -- as long as you know which options you need to change -- and that's explained in this tutorial!

Follow these steps to apply picture fills to chart series:

1. You must have a chart in your presentation (see the column chart shown in Figure 1). You can learn how to insert a chart in PowerPoint 2002 or 2003 here...
   
   
   Figure 1: Column Chart
   
   
2. Double-click the chart and then select the data series, as shown in Figure 2. If you have trouble selecting the data series, you can select any chart object from the Standard toolbar in chart editing mode.
   
   
   Figure 2: Selected data series
   
   
3. From the menu choose, Format | Selected Data Series as shown in Figure 3.
   
   
   Figure 3: Selected Data Series
   
   
4. This summons the Format Data Series dialog box, as shown in Figure 4.
   
   
   Figure 4: Format Data Series
   
   
5. Within the Patterns tab, click the Fill Effects button (highlighted in red) as you can see in Figure 4 above.
   
   
6. This brings up the Fill Effects dialog box (see Figure 5). Within the Fill Effects dialog box, choose the Picture tab -- and click the Select Picture button.
   
   
   Figure 5: Picture tab
   
   
7. This brings up the Select Picture window (see Figure 6) -- navigate to, and select the picture you want to use, and then click the Insert button.
   
   
   Figure 6: Select a picture
   
   Note: Try and use simple pictures as far as possible with few colors and less detail -- if you choose very detailed pictures with too much color, you might lose the impact of this technique altogether.
   
   
8. The selected picture can be seen in Picture tab of Fill Effects dialog box, as you can see in Figure 7.
   
   
   Figure 7: Selected picture
   
   
9. As you can see in Figure 7 above, there are several other options available, as explained below:
   
   
   • Format | Stretch: This option stretches the picture to fit within the series (see Figure 8).
     
     
     Figure 8: Stretch
     
     
   • Format | Stack: Creates copies of the picture in a way so they can be placed on top of each other, Figure 9 shows how.
     
     
     Figure 9: Stack
     
     
   • Format | Stack and Scale to Units/Picture: Here you can insert the numbers of units for per picture (see Figure 10 here I used 20 as the number to stack and scale ).
     
     
     Figure 10: Stack and scale to units/picture
10. After making your choice, click OK to get back to the chart.
    
    
11. You can exit the chart editing mode by clicking anywhere outside the chart area or the datasheet.
    
    
12. Save your presentation.
    

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