Excel might have some good features if you really have to work with data arranged in tables, but when it comes to graphics it totally sucks. Have you every tried to export a graph from Excel? I tried it once use M$’s interface (experience here) but let’s assume that you just want a JPG or GIF from the figure you produced. I was searching for a straightforward method to get that done, but I did not find anything that could really work. This page summarizes some ideas, whereas most of them are weird and don’t produce any output that can really be displayed outside your lab. Why is there no simple option like “save as …” where you select JPEG or whatever format and you get the figure exported? Maybe its a copyright issue related to the graphics formats, but I suppose that M$ is just happy with the way how things are dealt now. Most of the people make their (bar- or pie-) plots with Excel and the only way they export that diagram is via the “Print” option, producing some hardcopy 
For those who are willing to spend some time on getting used to the environment (scientists use it anyway) I strongly recommend to switch to GNUPLOT which can do the same as your M$ product, but allows you to export to a variety of formats (even vector graphics!) and the plots look quite OK as shown here or here.
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