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Why Bother Renaming Charts and Tables in Excel?

When you add a new chart or table to an Excel workbook, it gets a default name assigned by Excel. This is Chart1, Chart2, PivotTable1, PivotTable2, etc. It's always a good idea to rename tables and charts with a nice self-documenting description. But if you're like me, you may not have always taken the time to tidy up these names unless there's a formula or code actually referencing it. Here's a good reason to bother with names going forward...

Previews in Power BI, SharePoint Online, and OneDrive

In OneDrive and SharePoint Online (including Power BI when you're in the "regular" document library view), when you click the ellipses to show more options, it displays a nice little preview popup. Using the arrows, you can scroll through and see a preview of each chart and table contained in the file before you even open it.

Here's what the preview looks like. In this first example a default name of Chart12 is displayed.

And here's what the preview looks like after the chart has been renamed...nice touch, huh?

Power BI Mobile App

Also, the Power BI mobile application displays pivot chart and pivot table names prominently at the top of each screen:


Updating Pivot Table and Chart Names

To update a Chart name, select the chart and go to PivotChart Tools > Analyze > Chart Name.

To update a Table name, go to PivotTable Tools > Analyze > PivotTable Name.

That's it! Quick and easy. Your reward is that the preview mode in SharePoint Online, Power BI, and OneDrive will be a bit cleaner looking.

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