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.
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.
In Spotfire, I am trying to draw three horizontal curves from columns in a different data table than my plot. These lines are supposed to be target lines. I know I can do this either in a combination chart or in Lines & Curves in properties.
However, I prefer not to do it in a combination chart as I have to add colouring and I get many distinct series when I add colouring to three different target lines.
So I tried doing this by adding a horizontal line in "Add > Horizontal Line > Line From Data Table". However instead of drawing a curve what this does is draw multiple horizontal lines for the slightly fluctuating values in this column. I have also tried other options in Lines & Curves but none seem to work. And this happens although I have matchedthe data tables.
Does anyone have an idea how I can draw these target lines while avoiding the situation linked below?
The situation now:
The red, purple and black lines are supposed to be 3 seperate lines.
I think you are very close. Try the Properties > Lines and Curves and then Add > Line From Column Values. You will need to specify the x and y axis from the data table.
This will not always work on a bar chart, as the x may not line up with your category axis on the bar chart. Your x-axis for the line will need to be the same as the category axis.
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.
I know how to draw a line with scatter plot options where X is the independent and Y the dependent variable.
In the scatter plot of that data I need to add another line: X=2. I have the following data:
But how to draw a line X=1 ?
Maybe you want something like this:
I hear that charting is more different than many other aspects of Excel between versions and that perhaps my version (Excel 2007) is one of the least ‘friendly’ hence some of the reason for “not very easy” but the principle is as #Bill the Lizard has described. In view of some weird behaviour with (my?) Excel 2007 however I recommend being careful about the sequence in which the lines are drawn.
First I suggest getting your chart right for all aspects but the green line. Then add another series with X values of 1 and 1 and Y=2 values of 10 and -2 (or whatever the limits are of your chosen y-axis as displayed). Select and copy that array (four cells) select your chart and Paste Special…, and Add cells as New Series, Columns, Categories (X Values) in First Column, OK.
This should add a vertical line of the same chart type as the existing (ie XY (Scatter) Scatter with Straight Lines and Markers). The colour can be changed, by selecting that series (click on it and Format Data Series…, Line Color etc) and presumably you would want the markers removed. It was these that for me at first refused to disappear to order – but persistence paid off. Click on either of the data points, and under Marker Options choose none for Marker Type. If necessary, repeat for the other data point – and keep repeating if required!
Also, I selected what was showing as Series3 (text) in the legend and deleted that.
Forgot to mention that for anything to do with Excel charts Jon Peltier is the ultimate authority (eg) and that an alternative approach is to use an error bar and a secondary vertical axis.
I'm looking for a multiple axis line chart similar to the one in the image below, (which is a javascript chart made by amcharts).
Does excel have an option to draw charts line these? Note there are 3 Y axes, and 3 line charts allowing you to compare data.
Is it possible to get more than 3 data points, each with unique axis on one chart ?
It is possible to get both the primary and secondary axes on one side of the chart by designating the secondary axis for one of the series.
To get the primary axis on the right side with the secondary axis, you need to set to "High" the Axis Labels option in the Format Axis dialog box for the primary axis.
To get the secondary axis on the left side with the primary axis, you need to set to "Low" the Axis Labels option in the Format Axis dialog box for the secondary axis.
I know of no way to get a third set of axis labels on a single chart. You could fake in axis labels & ticks with text boxes and lines, but it would be hard to get everything aligned correctly.
The more feasible route is that suggested by zx8754: Create a second chart, turning off titles, left axes, etc. and lay it over the first chart. See my very crude mockup which hasn't been fine-tuned yet.
The picture you showd in the question is actually a chart made using JavaScript. It is actually very easy to plot multi-axis chart using JavaScript with the help of 3rd party libraries like HighChart.js or D3.js. Here I propose to use the Funfun Excel add-in which allows you to use JavaScript directly in Excel so you could plot chart like you've showed easily in Excel. Here I made an example using Funfun in Excel.
You could see in this chart you have one axis of Rainfall at the left side while two axis of Temperature and Sea-pressure level at the right side. This is also a combination of line chart and bar chart for different datasets. In this example, with the help of the Funfun add-in, I used HighChart.js to plot this chart.
Funfun also has an online editor in which you could test your JavaScript code with you data. You could check the detailed code of this example on the link below.
https://www.funfun.io/1/#/edit/5a43b416b848f771fbcdee2c
Edit: The content on the previous link has been changed so I posted a
new link here. The link below is the original link
https://www.funfun.io/1/#/edit/5a55dc978dfd67466879eb24
If you are satisfied with the result you achieved in the online editor, you could easily load the result into you Excel using the URL above. Of couse first you need to insert the Funfun add-in from Insert - My add-ins. Here are some screenshots showing how you could do this.
Disclosure: I'm a developer of Funfun
There is a way of displaying 3 Y axis see here.
Excel supports Secondary Axis, i.e. only 2 Y axis. Other way would be to chart the 3rd one separately, and overlay on top of the main chart.
An alternative is to normalize the data. Below are three sets of data with widely varying ranges. In the top chart you can see the variation in one series clearly, in another not so clearly, and the third not at all.
In the second range, I have adjusted the series names to include the data range, using this formula in cell C15 and copying it to D15:E15
=C2&" ("&MIN(C3:C9)&" to "&MAX(C3:C9)&")"
I have normalized the values in the data range using this formula in C15 and copying it to the entire range C16:E22
=100*(C3-MIN(C$3:C$9))/(MAX(C$3:C$9)-MIN(C$3:C$9))
In the second chart, you can see a pattern: all series have a low in January, rising to a high in March, and dropping to medium-low value in June or July.
You can modify the normalizing formula however you need:
=100*C3/MAX(C$3:C$9)
=C3/MAX(C$3:C$9)
=(C3-AVERAGE(C$3:C$9))/STDEV(C$3:C$9)
etc.
Taking the answer above as guidance;
I made an extra graph for "hours worked by month", then copy/special-pasted it as a 'linked picture' for use under my other graphs. in other words, I copy pasted my existing graphs over the linked picture made from my new graph with the new axis.. And because it is a linked picture it always updates.
Make it easy on yourself though, make sure you copy an existing graph to build your 'picture' graph - then delete the series or change the data source to what you need as an extra axis. That way you won't have to mess around resizing.
The results were not too bad considering what I wanted to achieve; basically a list of incident frequency bar graph, with a performance tread line, and then a solid 'backdrop' of hours worked.
Thanks to the guy above for the idea!
Best and Free ( maybe only) solution for this is google sheets.
i don't know whether it plots as u expected or not but certainly you can draw multiple axes.
Regards
keerthan