I would like to create a bar-chart (or a histogram?) with vertical bars and a numerical x-axis , but I do not know how/where to start. I have MS-Excel and Origin-plot available with me. My intended chart would look like this:
You can more or less get what you want by adding and styling error bars appropriately to a scatter plot. The error bar is a simple way to force Excel to draw a line under/over the point.
Chart with data and error bars
Couple steps
Make an XY scatter chart
Add the error bars and delete the horizontal ones that come up
Set the negative error bar for the points to be equal to the same value that is being plotted
Set the positive error bar to 0 so it does not show
Change the formatting on the error bar to be thicker
Possible hide the initial dot shown so that it is bar only
You could take these steps and codify them with some VBA to prevent the tedious nature of doing this multiple times. Setting error bars is one of the worst activities to have to do continually.
I believe you should also be able to get your desired colors by adding multiple series. Possibly all the more reason to do this with VBA.
Related
Hi, I have trouble with my line chart here, the line chart is overlaping and it makes another line is not visible or covered up.
If the data is so similar then the lines will overlap.
One thing you can start with is using a false y-axis zero, starting the chart at, say, 50%, this may provide sufficient separation if the values do have differences.
Is this specific type of line chart necessary?
A 3D Line chart might get past the problem.
Image of a 3D chart with similar data in 2 series
If you want to stop similar/identical lines overlapping without changing their actual values, you're going to need to plot one of those lines on a different scale:
in the 'chart design' tab hit 'change chart type'
change it to 'combo chart', ad set both series as lines but in one of them, tick the box for 'plot on secondary axis'. Or, you could set one series as a different type of chart, e.g. a bar chart.
If both are lines and both axes default to the same scale (which is quite probable), you'll want to edit one of them to adjust the scale. Right click on a chart element and hit 'format', then select either 'vertical axis options' or 'secondary vertical axis options' from the dropdown, then click the fourth icon (little bar chart) and adjust the minimum and/or maximum bounds.
Hopefully that should separate the lines out without changing the values they actually depict. However, if it really comes to that, it might be easier to set them as two different charts. Certainly would make it easier to interpret the values.
I have a combo chart in excel, with clustered bar charts (for a box plot) and lines. I am trying to display the bar charts/box plot in front of the lines, but am able to do so.
I tried moving the bar charts to the top and/or bottom in "select data" - but no change.
Any suggestions?
Am using Excel 2013.
Thanks!
I believe it is not possible. You can change display ordering of Excel series by:
changing the plot order of the series (this is what you have done in the "Select data" dialog),
changing the axis on which the series are displayed (series on secondary axis are displayed over the series on the primary axis).
But from my experiments no combination of changes makes the lines appear behind the columns.
There are two workarounds that might or might not help you:
you can create two charts on top of each other and put the chart with the lines behind the one with the columns,
or you could create a line chart (most likely you would need scatter chart), that is not a single line but a series of segments where the columns are not shown (this one is not that easy to do)
What are the lines for? If you are just trying to identify some zones along the value axis, you could instead use stacked areas, which would give a banded appearance. Areas are always drawn behind bars and columns, while lines are always drawn in front of lines and columns.
Do you know if this chart, as shown in the following image, can be done in Excel?
Chart:
I don't even know how this kind of chart is named, so I cannot search in the web for tutorials. I don't need to display three points on every row as in this chart (one is enough), and even I can mark the control group manually.
Yes this can be done in Excel.
If you want vertical orientation like on the picture above, then you should probably use the Scatter chart with quite some modifications. You would set the x values of the series to your values and the y values can be just 1,2,3,4,5.... The biggest problem with this approach would be how to display the correct categories. There is a tool to help you do that and it is discussed here: https://superuser.com/questions/485883/how-to-create-dynamic-scatter-plot-matrix-with-labels-and-categories-on-both-axi
For horizontal one you can use a normal line chart - with hidden line and only markers visible (Excel doesn't support vertical line graphs).
Even three groups are easy to do, you just need to add three series and format them accordingly.
The lines are also quite easy to do, you add minor / major gridlines to the chart and then format those as well.
Im using Excel for Mac 2011 and I have the following figure
I would like to still show the bubbles outside of the available chart area, while keeping the maximum and minimum axes values unchanged.
Create an identical chart with the same data, but with axis limits that show the full bubbles. Then set all the formatting in the chart other than the bubbles to the equivalent of "none", i.e, no axis labels, chart outlines, gridlines, chart and plot borders, background color, etc.
With very careful sizing and positioning of this bubbles-only chart over the original chart, you can get the bubbles to extend beyond the plot area of the original. If the size or position of a bubble is a little off, modify the overlay chart's data by the tiny amount needed to get the bubble to cover the underlying original bubble. Turn off the formatting for the underlying bubbles as last step.
NOT programmatic, very trial and error, and fussy, of course, and I hope someone comes up with a more elegant way to achieve your goal. But I was able to get it to work on my Windows machine.
I'm using Excel 2007 to create a log-scale chart of numbers (specifically the Zimbabwean dollar exchange rate) over time. I'm using an x-y scatterplot and noticing one odd quirk.
The range of y values (numbers) spans a factor of about 10^30. On every chart I make using this data, half the gridlines are missing. Specifically, only the gridlines corresponding to the largest values show up. In fact, regardless of the total range only the top factor of 10^13 or so have gridlines. This is not dependent on the log base.
Am I doing something wrong? Is this a known bug? I can't find any references to this issue on google or microsoft's bug reports.
Silly work around as well, but if you are going to be presenting your graph in Powerpoint, you can make the background color of the graph "no fill" and then when you paste it into Powerpoint (I paste it as a PDF). You can draw grid lines and match them up with the ticks on the y-axis. Arrange your graph "bring to front" when you are finished drawing so that the lines won't appear in front of your data. You can group it all to make sure the lines don't shift while making your presentation and so that they re-size properly if you re-size your graph.
I'm having the same problem, it's definitely a bug.
Try a sequence 1, 10, 100, 1e+12, 1e+30 vs 0..4 and plot x,y scatter, and clearly the scale grid is messed-up even in linear, and in log is the behaviour you described.
My workaround was to make a transformation of the values and depict them scaled down (by a Million factor). That way the data the graph is handling is never above 10e9 (the value I started to hit issues).
So, my suggestion is: graph a Log version of the data (and clearly make a legend for it)
I was able to replicate your problem and come up with a pseudo-workaround.
The formatting goes a bit funny, but all the lines show up if you right-click on the axis, select Format Axis. Under the Axis Options, there is a Horizontal Axis Crosses setting. Changing it from Automatic to Maximum Axis Value causes all the gridlines to appear.
Ran into same thing: Will not show log grid lines for y-axis ranging below 1e-7. Have need for dynamic range of 1e5 down to 1e-15. Tagging auto or max will show grid, but puts axis labels in non-useful place for display.
My workaround: used Open Office to get what I needed. Could not find useful solution in Excel 2010.