Tech Tips: Making Graphs Transparent in IBM SPSS Statistics

Making Graphs Transparent

in IBM SPSS Statistics

• By default SPSS charts have a

grey chart area with a white

background

• If you are creating a power point

presentation that has a certain

style or theme and you want your

graph to fit into this style you can

make the whole chart

transparent

Why makes SPSS Graphs transparent ?

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Graph/Chart Layouts

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Outer frame - Frame around all of the elements

Text box – The title in the previous slide

Data frame - Frame around the axis titles, axis labels, and

data

Inner frame - The part of the chart that displays the actual

data

Legend frame. Frame around the legend

Graph/Chart Layouts

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• We will use the sample file “dietstudy.sav”

• Located in C:\Program Files\IBM\SPSS\Statistics\*Version\Samples\English

*Version: Your SPSS Statistics Version,

e.g. 20, 21, 22,…

• Firstly we will create a simple scatter plot

• Graphs -> Chart Builder -> ScatterDot -> Simple Scatter

First create a chart

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• In the output viewer you can double click on a graph and it will open the chart editor

• This can also be done by right clicking and selecting edit content – in separate window

• In the chart editor we can edit the graphs appearance

-

Viewing the graph

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• To make the chart area transparent you need to select the data frame

• There is always a yellow frame around something when it has been selected

• To make the chart area transparent (instead of grey select the fill colour button

Making the chart area transparent

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• Select the transparent colour and the background will be set to transparent

Making the chart area transparent

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Graph with transparent chart area

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• To make the graph transparent you first need to select the outer frame

• There is always a yellow frame around something when it has been selected

• To make the entire chart transparent select fill colour button

Making the whole graph transparent

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Transparent Chart

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• To paste the transparent graph into powerpoint ensure you copy it from SPSS as a Metafile

• When pasting into powerpoint select “Paste Special”

How to paste the transparent chart into a presentation

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Transparent Graph

This is a transparent graph

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