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Forum home » Delegate support and help forum » Microsoft Excel Training and help » Excel charts - column order
Excel charts - column order
Resolved · Medium Priority · Version 2003
Thu 5 Jun 2008, 15:14Delegate Simon said...
Simon has attended:
Dreamweaver 8 Introduction course
Access Intermediate course
Excel charts - column order
I've got a straightfoward bar chart, showing different departments across the x-axis and numbers of staff against the y-axis. It's fine, except that the columns are ordered alphabetically and I want to choose the order myself. The microsoft help covers this, but only to reorder different data series - this is just one data series. grateful for your help.
Thanks, Simon
Mon 9 Jun 2008, 17:18Trainer Amanda said...
RE: Excel charts - column order
Hi Simon
Thanks for your question.
I think the only way you will be able to achieve this is to rearrange the data in the spreadsheet that you are creating the chart from.
I appreciate this might be a bit of a hassle depending on how much data there is and if there are formulas in your spreadsheet that look at these figures as well.
If this is the case maybe you could copy and paste the data into a separate sheet and then rearrange the data before creating the chart.
Amanda
Tue 10 Jun 2008, 08:57Delegate Simon said...
RE: Excel charts - column order
Thanks Amanda - that has worked, but I've discovered a further problem - along the x-axis my chart is showing responses to a questionnaire using the categories "Excellent", "Good"... etc for each question and number of responses on the y-axis. Is there any way to get rid of the gaps in the chart where a zero number of responses is recorded? Thanks, Simon
Tue 10 Jun 2008, 09:23Trainer Amanda said...
RE: Excel charts - column order
Hi Simon
Great, I'm glad you have the data bars in the order you want them. I don't think you can get rid of the gap where you don't have a bar appearing because it reflects a value of 0.
Maybe you could try the following:
- Double-click on one of the bars in the chart
- Go to the Data Labels tab
- Check the Value tickbox, click OK.
This will show the value of each bar above it, so it will display a 0 in the gap so at least anyone looking at the chart will know that there is a gap for a reason (i.e. there were 0 responses for that particular category).
I hope this helps.
Amanda
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