Excel bar chart - excel

I am trying to make a stacked 100% excel chart where the fill color of each series is the same, and borders (of a different color) only on the top of the box. If I choose to edit the border, the only option I see is one that allows me to make the entire border for the series; i.e top, bottom and on the sides. Can anyone please suggest how I can have border only on the top?
Thanks much!

You can't selectively format the edges of a bar in an Excel chart.
You could add another series with a small value (e.g. .1% of the total). This won't have a fillable rectangle, but it will still have a border that you can format.

Related

Excel - Changing design of bars in charts

In excel charts can we change design of bars from
to
Background: I have taken agile project plan excel template from https://www.smartsheet.com/agile-project-management-excel-templates, but I didnt like the bars without arrows and hence I want to change these bars to look something like bars in https://www.smartsheet.com/agile-project-management-excel-templates#agile-product-roadmap-template
Lead here is appreciated.
Half... Let me show and you decide :)
This arrow is not a chart object. It's a shape, a drawing:
However, we can use shape object in Excel charts.
Remove text (you'll see in the last picture why) and Copy the excel object (picture above).
Mark the chart series you want to replace (notice I marked all of them, small circles)
Then just paste :D!!
Notice one bar has a border line, just click on the bar -> "Fill & Line" -> "Border" -> "No Line" to hide the border line around your shape object.
You can do it individually with different colours. When the graph changes the size of your bars changes too (according to your data). It's a bit more "maintenance" but looks better. General rule, the better it looks, the more "special" it is (more manual involvement)...

Excel Office.js: how to change the fill color of a chart plot area

I can easily change background color of an entire chart like:
chart.format.fill.setSolidColor("lightgray");
and I can change the gridlines in the plot area.
I want to change the fill color of the plot area. Can I do that?
Sorry. There is no Office.JS API to do that yet. We are working on such an API. I'm not allowed to predict when it will be available.

Change color of data label placed, using the 'best fit' option, outside a pie chart - Excel 2010

I am working with a pie chart whose data labels are added using the best fit property. Most of those labels are placed by Excel inside the pie, but some of them are placed outside.
Because of some series colors are so strong, the data labels had to be defined as white. Of course, the labels placed outside the pie wont be visible if I don't manually change their color (to black, for instance)
What I am trying to do is to conditionally change the label's color according to where Excel placed it (white inside the pie, black outside it), as in the following image:
I have been searching for a solution, but it seems that nobody had a similar problem.
Does anyone know if Excel allows this or does someone know a trick to bypass it?
There is a way to do this in Excel.
When you click on the chart, and go to Layout under Chart Tools.
Once there, go to Data Labels.
When you click on that, it will display a drop-down menu. At the bottom of the menu, click on More Data Label Options.
It will pull up a new window. On the sidebar of the new window, click on Number.
Then, under Category click on Custom.
In the textbox shown under Format Code, type in [Black][<0.05]0%;[White][>=0.05]0%
Click Add.
It should format the numbers outside the pie chart in your example black, and the numbers inside the pie white. If you had different data, you could format it the same, but you would have to change the number in the brackets after the color to the number one higher than number outside of the pie. It would be like this: [Black][<(number one higher than number outside of the pie)]0%;[White][>=(number one higher than number outside of the pie)]0%
Screenshot of Pie Chart Formatting
Source:
http://chandoo.org/wp/2009/01/29/colors-in-excel-chart-labels-trick/

excel exporting to pdf; graph placement offset

I have some trouble with a document when exporting it to pdf with the builtin pdf export function of excel (2010).
I've generated a graph on my worksheet, with some colored cells arround it. Visually it looks good (even if I zoom on it with the ctrl key + mouse wheel). But when exporting, the graph overlap the surrounding cells.
For example, on the image bellow, I take a screenshot of my graph in excel (at top) and in pdf (at bottom). The red part is my graph (I've colored the background of the graph object). The graph have a black border. And just on the top of the graph, I've colored the background of a cell in blue. Normally, the graph must not overlap the blue cell, because I've manually place it bellow (cut the graph, select the cell bellow the blue one, and past the graph to this emplacement).
But we can see that:
the black border overlap the blue cell (in excel and in pdf version; but it's not really my problem; I've understand that the border in excel object is at outside the object; and then overlapp surround objects/cells).
the graph (in red + the border) has not the same place in excel and in pdf, there is a big offset (it's not a resize problem, this offset is present and the left side too). The place of the graph is more on the left and more on the top in pdf version than it can be!
(I'm using this to automatically generate reports; and the result is not visually good)
Is there any way to overcome this problem?
Hmm, I can't replicate your problem, but I've had similar issues exporting Crystal Reports to PDF. Here's 2 suggestions, neither of which is perfect and I couldn't try them first (again, sorry I couldn't replicate the problem):
Add a white row with a very small height between the graph and the cell. It might even be visually more appealing than the 2 objects one on top of the other.
Make your graph's background transparent and hide the border. Maybe add some extra white space at the top of your graph. That way, they'll still overlap, but it won't be as obvious.

Why is Autofit Labeling greyed out?

I Have created a bar chart in a 2007 .xls file, but the data labels cannot be resized. When you go to the "format Data Labels" and then click on alignment, the Autofit and Internal Margin option is grayed out. Anyone know why?
Short version: It is greyed out for chart text, because it the option doesn’t apply.
Long version:
This is because on a chart, chart text do need to use margins, rather you can you can just move the text., and set its X and Y position. For example take the Chart Title, if you want more space to the left, just click and drag the title to the right. If you want the chart title to be bigger you just set a larger font, you have complete control over the title, as well as all other text on that chart, axis titles, legends, data labels, etc.
Internal margins are meant to be used when you don’t have complete control take for example text in a shape. If you insert a shape in your workbook, and add text to it, you cannot just pick the text up and move it to the right if you want more space on the left, so you can set the margin.
Here's a trick that worked for me:
My problem was: I added more text to the axis title and it was too long for it's original shape so some text went into second line.
My solution: I type the complete text somewhere else, copy the text, double click on the axis title and delete the original text -- the cursor would still be there -- now insert the copied text. Done! They are all in one line!
Partial solution to resize label to a single line: Data labels in a chart will often wrap themselves, when you dont want them to. They would often seem better in a vertical single line above the graph item. Reset them to one single line by editing the text in the label, deleting the Excel imposed return, and replace it with a space. The line, and label box, will resize to fit a single line. However because you have "manually interfered with the lable, it will no longer update for changing graph data. You would have to double click each lable then reset it. Most annoying.
A way around it is to make the chart area big. The data label boxes will resize to fit the words in one line. Then make the chart small (not the chart area).
Manually insert a textbox into the bar chart and type in the label that way. It's annoying and labor-intensive, but it works.

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