PTS Blog

Main menu:

PTS Utilities

Commercial Utilities developed by Peltier Technical Services

  Waterfall Chart
  Box and Whiskers
     Coming soon!


 

Excel Books

Books that I own and use while developing in Excel

Goods and Services

Excel or charting related products and services which I use or feel are worthwhile additions

Subscribe

Subscribe

Site search


Recent Posts

Recently Commented

Popular Posts

Archive


 

Categories


 

Overlapped Bar Chart - Thinner Bars in Front

by Jon Peltier
Peltier Technical Services, Inc., Copyright © 2008. All rights reserved.

In Overlapped Bar Chart - Longer Bars in Back I showed a fairly easy way to make a chart Robert Kosara developed to examine popular vote and Electoral College vote in US presidential elections. Stag Lee commented that Robert’s chart type was not intuitive, and suggested a slight modification, as shown here:

Column Chart Thinner in Front

This example uses the same data from the previous post.

Sample Data

Start with a simple clustered column chart.

Column Chart Thinner in Front

Select one of the series (in this case “One”), and move it to the secondary axis.

Column Chart Thinner in Front

Remove the secondary Y axis, the axis along the top edge of the chart.

Column Chart Thinner in Front

Change the gap width of the series in front to 200, and of the series behind to 50.

Column Chart Thinner in Front

This is also a relatively clear way to show the two series, but it’s not as striking when the thin series represents a larger value than the wide series. Robert’s chart, reproduced below, more clearly shows the series with the smaller value, because the smaller series bar is visible all the way to the left exis of the chart.

Column Chart Larger in Back

Possibly Related Posts:

If you liked this entry, please bookmark and share it:
  • Digg
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • Technorati
  • TwitThis
  • StumbleUpon
  • Google
  • Reddit

Comments

I welcome comments from my readers. If you have an opinion on this post, if you have a question or if there is anything to add, I want to hear from you. Whether you agree or disagree, please join the discussion.

Read the PTS Blog Comment Policy.


Pingback from Excel Links of the Week - The Mt. Rainier edition | Pointy Haired Dilbert - Chandoo.org
Time: Monday, October 13, 2008, 1:54 pm

[...] Overlapped Bar Chart - Thinner Bars in Front: This extremely useful and neat charting tweak comes from none other than Peltier himself. Learn how to overlap bars in a bar chart such a way that thinner bars stay on top for that special occasion when you had to. [...]


Comment from Mrayo
Time: Friday, October 17, 2008, 10:42 pm

I am so gonna use this on my weekly report!
Thanks Mr. Peltier!
I always check your your site!

Write a comment





Subscribe without commenting

Create Excel dashboards quickly with Plug-N-Play reports.