Comments on: Order of Legend Entries in Excel Charts

By: Jon Peltier

Jon Peltier — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 00:37:31 +0000

John -

Good job. Just because it doesn’t seem like Excel can do something, doesn’t mean you should stop trying to think of other ways to do it. I like your phrase “phantom series” better than the “dummy series” I’ve been using all along. I might have to adopt it as my own.

By: John Krumm

John Krumm — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 00:16:19 +0000

Thanks for this informative post. It really helped me get a chart looking the way I wanted it to. My problem was that I wanted to show only a subset of the legend, so I need the ones I wanted to show near the top of the legend. I couldn’t do this because I had a secondary vertical axis, and one of the legends that I wanted near the top was on this axis. I ended up creating a small phantom series on the primary vertical axis with the legend entry that I wanted to show. This phantom series was tiny, in my case a really short line segment, but I gave it the right series name and line type to give the legend entry I wanted.. Now its entry is near the top of the legend like I want, but you can’t see the actual series on the chart. Problem solved.

By: Jon Peltier

Jon Peltier — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 20:50:41 +0000

Indigo -

When I make a chart such as you describe, I get three column series in the legend followed by three line series. When I set up the legend to show three rows and two columns of entries, the top two and the first in the middle row are column series. There’s no way to get the lines in one column of legend entries and the columns in the other. You could make a two-row legend, with all the column series in one row.

By: Indigo

Indigo — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 20:02:20 +0000

What should I do with a combination chart (column and line) that does not seem to follow your rules? I have 6 legend entries, 3 are column and 3 are line. I cannot seem to sort the legend so that it comes up as:

— North Plan [ ] North Actual
- – South Plan [ ] South Actual
->- West Plan [ ] West Actual

No amount of fiddling I do with the series order will get it to line up nicely. All I get is:

— North Plan [ ] North Actual
- – South Plan [ ] South Actual
[ ] West Actual ->- West Plan

By: Jan Schultink

Jan Schultink — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 19:34:24 +0000

Great research and explaining.

The order in which the automated Microsoft legend appears is one of the reason I usually create them manually in PowerPoint charts. A bit more work but 100% in my control.

By: Andy Pope

Andy Pope — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 10:49:04 +0000

Either of those suggestions Jon would be a useful addition to the OM.

By: Jon Peltier

Jon Peltier — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 15:32:11 +0000

Yeah, trendlines mess up the legend, and I forgot about that. I think they (and error bars) also mess up the series indexes and the series sequence, but I don’t recall exactly how.

I’d like to see a simple property added to the Series object: AppearsInLegend. Even better, how about making the LegendEntry object a member of the Series class, then adding .Visible to the LegendEntry. Unfortunately for 2007, they removed more than they added to Excel charting. I do not have high hopes for improvements in Excel 14.

By: Andy Pope

Andy Pope — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 13:44:24 +0000

Hi Jon,

Are going to cover Trend lines in another article?

About 4 years ago I tried to create a addin that would allow users to select which items would appear or be hidden in the legend. But I gave up in the end as the combinations you have describe were just too convoluted to code and get reliable results.

By: Gordon

Gordon — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 13:33:08 +0000

Brilliantly explained as usual Jon, thanks. Makes (almost) perfect sense now you’ve explained the ground rules, why can’t Microsoft document their own products to this degree?.