Need help with creating histogram. Error message: Input range contains non-numeric data.

Do you really mean histogram... or do you mean bar chart?

Is the picture complete? For a histogram, I would expect to see at least a bins column/range, but I do not see any indication of what bins you want to use for the counts/frequencies. The text in column A are not suitable values for bins, if that is what you are trying to use.

My expectation for a histogram from this data:
1) Select bin values and enter them in the spreadsheet. One will usually be looking to count how many entries in column B are less than 10, 20-30, 30-40, and so on. So 10, 20, 30, 40,... become your bins.
2) With the bin values selected, count the number of entries in each bin. The histogram tool does this automatically after you give it input and bin ranges. Or you can use the COUNTIFS() function or FREQUENCY() function to perform these counts outside of the histogram tool.
3) With the frequencies calculated, insert a column chart and format as desired.

If that is not what you are trying to do, then explain what you are trying to do.

Could that be a typo in the text? Should it read "select the range B4:B243"? The error you are getting seems consistent with selecting column A to include in the histogram data. Perhaps someone else with a newer version (2013 in your profile) can verify the behavior of the newer version.

I know the newer versions of Excel can auto "guess" at the bins, though I would generally not be one to let Excel auto guess at something like that. It seems like your instructions should work if you limit your selection to column B.

Input range would be B2:B243
Bin range -- wherever you want to put it. Assuming 5 bins, maybe E2:E6 where you might have 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 in those cells.

Any chance there is any text anywhere in column B (including numbers stored as text)? Can you upload a copy of your spreadsheet with a description of exactly what you are doing?

I took Glenn Kennedy's spreadsheet. Went into Data ribbon -> Data analysis -> Histogram tool. In the histogram dialog, I told it to use B2:B15 as the input range, O5:O10 as the bins range, and had the output in R5, and include the chart. I would guess that you have some non-numeric data in your input range outside of the range of your screenshots.

@MrShorty Okay so I made some adjustments from what you told me to use. My input range was B5:B243 and bin range was D4:D8. I didn't get an error message because there wasn't any non-numeric data in the B column. However, my histogram chart doesn't look anything like the one my professor included in the instructions page.

Here's the copy of the spreadsheet.

Right click on the chart area and change the chart type to the one that you prefer.