Combination Charts

Bar-Line (XY) Combination Chart in Excel

Friday, February 19, 2016 by Jon Peltier 19 Comments

Friday, February 19, 2016 by Jon Peltier
Peltier Technical Services, Inc., Copyright © 2023, All rights reserved.

Combination charts combine data using more than one chart type, for example columns and a line. Building a combination chart in Excel is usually pretty easy. But if one series type is horizontal bars, then combining this with another type can be tricky. I’m here to help with Bar-Line, or rather, Bar-XY combination charts in Excel.

Combination Charts in Excel

I’ll illustrate a simple combination chart with this simple data. The chart will use the first column for horizontal axis category labels, the second column for actual values plotted using lines with markers, and the third column using columns (vertical bars).

We start by selecting the data and inserting a column chart.

We finish by right clicking on the “Actual” data, choosing Change Series Chart Type from the pop-up menu, and selecting the new chart type we want. I’ve also used a lighter shade of orange for the columns, to make the markers stand out better.

Let’s do the same for a bar chart. Select the data, insert a bar chart.

Okay, the category labels are along the vertical axis, but we’ll continue by changing the Actual data to a line chart series. That didn’t work out at all. The markers are not positioned vertically along the centers of the horizontal bars, nor horizontally where the data lies in the Actual column of the worksheet.

In the chart below I’ve shown all axis scales and axis titles to illustrate the problem. When we converted the Actual series to a line type, Excel assigned it to the secondary axis, and we have no ability to reassign it to the primary axis. The primary axes used for the bar chart are not aligned with the secondary axes used for the line chart: the X axis for the bars is vertical and the X axis for the line is horizontal; the Y axis for the bars is horizontal and the Y axis for the line is vertical.

We can’t use a line chart at all. If we want to line up the markers horizontally with their proper position along the lengths of the bars, we need to use the Actual data as the X values of an XY series. We will need to generate some additional data for the Y values of the XY series.

Bar-XY Combination Chart

We will not try to make a Bar-Line combination chart, because the Line chart type does not position the markers where we want them. We will make a Bar-XY chart type, using an XY chart type (a/k/a Scatter chart type) to position markers.

Here is the new data needed for our Bar-XY combination chart. The factor labels and Target values will be used by the Bar chart series, and the Actual values and Heights for the XY series. Don’t worry about the Height values: I’ll show how they are derived in a moment. The nice thing is that we can use dummy values now and type in the proper values later and the chart will update.

Select the first two columns of the data and insert a bar chart.

Since we probably want the categories listed in the same order as in the worksheet, let’s select the vertical axis (which in a bar chart is the X axis) and press Ctrl+1, the shortcut that opens the Format dialog or task pane for the selected object in Excel. Check the box for Categories in Reverse Order and also select Horizontal Axis Crosses at Maximum Category to move it next to Factor 5.

Bar chart with categories in reverse order

I’ve also recolored the bars orange, because blue markers show up better against light orange than orange markers against light blue.

Now copy the last two columns (Actual and Height), select the chart, and on the Home tab of the ribbon, click the Paste dropdown arrow, choose the options in this dialog (add cells as new series, values in columns, series names in first row, categories in first column), and click OK.

The data is added as another set of bars, which I’ve colored blue, but we’ll change that in a second.

Right-click on the added series, select Change Series Chart Type from the pop-up menu, and select XY with markers and lines.

We see that the horizontal positions of the markers is just what we want to show.

Now we can see where the values in the Heights column comes from. The right hand vertical axis is used for the Y values of the XY series. Looking at the positions of the horizontal bars and the markers in their correct positions, we can see that the Factor 1 bar is centered on Y=4.5, the Factor 2 bar is centered on 3.5, etc. If you hadn’t guessed this at the beginning, type these values into your data range, and let the chart update.

Calculation ov Heights (Y values for XY series)

A few minor changes and we’ll be done. First, change the name of the XY series from Heights to Actual. The easiest way is to click on the series, then look at the highlighted ranges in the chart. The X values (C2:C6) are highlighted purple, the Y values (D2:D6) are highlighted blue, and the series name (cell D1) is highlighted red (highlight colors in Excel 2010 and earlier are different, but the concept is the same). Click on the red border of cell D2, and drag the highlighting rectangle to cover cell C2 to change the series name.

Click on the red border of cell D2, and drag the highlighting rectangle to cover cell C2 to change the series name.

Then, use a lighter shade of orange for the bars, so the blue markers stand out. Finally, hide the right-hand vertical axis: format it so it has no labels and no line color.

And there’s our completed Bar-XY Combination Chart.

Make Technical Dot Plots in Excel

Friday, January 29, 2016 by Jon Peltier 23 Comments

Friday, January 29, 2016 by Jon Peltier
Peltier Technical Services, Inc., Copyright © 2023, All rights reserved.

What’s a “Technical” Dot Plot?

This chart is crisp and well suited for publication in a technical journal, hence the name I’ve given it, “Technical” Dot Plot. The chart below show results of a hypothetical clinical trial, where the X values (categories) are three different cleansing approaches, and the Y values are the individual responses, where a lower value indicates fewer incidences of infection.

This “technical” dot plot chart shows each individual response, to give you an idea of the distribution of results. This is more detailed than a simple average, or even a box plot, which simplifies the data distribution into its min, max, median, and quartiles. If desired, each category could have different marker (dot) shapes, sizes, or colors. However, that isn’t necessary.

Other Kinds of Dot Plot

If you Google “Dot Plot”, or search Wikipedia or any other resource, you’ll learn that the phrase “dot plot” can mean many different things. In addition to what I call the “Technical” Dot Plot shown above, there are also “Cleveland” Dot Plots, “Kindergarten” Dot Plots, and Scatter Plots. Technical Dot Plots, Cleveland Dot Plots, and Scatter Plots are all effective means of displaying data. Unfortunately people who display data effectively do not always come up with effective and unique names for their charts.

“Cleveland” Dot Plot

This type of graphic is named for William Cleveland who described them in a 1984 paper with coauthor Robert McGill. They were presented nicely by Naomi Robbins in Dot Plots: A Useful Alternative to Bar Charts.

Peltier Tech Charts for Excel can create this type of chart as easily as any built-in Excel chart.

These are often a better alternative to horizontally-oriented line charts, especially since the category labels can be reasonably long and still remain horizontal for improved readability.

“Kindergarten” Dot Plot

I call this the “Kindergarten” Dot Plot, because it feels more like a fingerpainted art project than a serious means of visualizing data. It is built by adding a dot to the chart every time you encounter the given value in a set of numbers. See another value, dip your finger in paint and put another blot on the paper.

To me, the histogram below is a better representation of the distribution above. The simple bars show the values without distracting me into counting all those stupid little dots.

Peltier Tech Charts for Excel can create histograms easily in Excel. Excel’s old Analysis Toolpak used to make column charts that were passed off as histograms, and Excel 2016 for Windows has finally introduced native histograms.

You can represent a histogram as a line chart, below left, often called a “Probability Polygon”. It’s not a terrible representation, though I prefer the histogram.

Often you’ll see a probability polygon shown with markers and without line segments, and it’s also called a dot plot, below right. I find this inferior, because the dots are unconnected and seem to be strewn across the chart.

Scatter Plot

A Scatter Plot (a/k/a XY Chart, Scatter Chart, etc.) is often called a Dot Plot because dots (markers) are used to indicate individual data points.

Make a Technical Dot Plot

I’ll describe a few different ways to create Technical Dot Plots. The end result is the same, but the protocol differs because you may have different data layouts available for use.

Regardless of data layout, we will make a combination chart, using a column chart type to get the nice horizontal axis labels and XY Scatter types to get the dots.

Data Layout A – Multiple X and Y Series

The first data layout has separate X and Y values for each category in the chart. The X and Y ranges for each set of dots may be next to each other:

or the X and Y ranges for each set of dots may be separated from each other:

You also need a small table with the category names and zero values. Select this small table, and insert a column chart. The chart appears to contain no data, because the zero values produce bars with zero height. Format this chart now (or later) as appropriate.

Copy and select the orange shaded data range, either B2:C12 in the example with the X and Y ranges together or B2:B12 and E2:E12 in the example with the separated X and Y ranges. To select multiple areas, select the first area, then hold Ctrl while selecting additional areas.

Select the chart, then go to Home tab > Paste dropdown > Paste Special, and choose the options shown in the dialog below, to add the data as new series, values in columns, series name in first row, categories in first column.

This results in the data being added as a new column series (below left). The categories are temporarily messed up: the three original categories are forced to the left because the new series has more points.

Right click on the added series, and choose Change Series Chart Type from the pop-up menu. Choose the XY Scatter type with markers and no lines. The result is a set of orange dots, plus secondary X and Y axes added to the chart (below right).

Select the series of dots and press Ctrl+1 (numeral one), the shortcut to open the Format Selected Object in Excel. Change the series from secondary to primary axis. Without an explicit X axis for the series, the X values of 1 align the points above the first category along the horizontal axis (below left).

Excel 2013 introduced a new Change Chart Type dialog which allows you to change chart types and axis of multiple series at once; this greatly reduces steps needed for this in a combination chart like this.

Copy and select the gray shaded data range, either D2:E12 in the example with X and Y ranges together or C2:C12 and F2:F12 in the example with separated X and Y ranges. Select the chart, and use Paste Special to add the data as new series, values in columns, series name in first row, categories in first column. The result is a set of gray dots added to the chart (below right). Excel remembers that the previous added series was changed to an XY type with markers and no lines on the primary axis, so it uses these settings for the new series. The X values of 2 position the gray dots above the second category along the X axis.

Copy and select the gold shaded data range, either F2:G12 in the example with X and Y ranges together or D2:D12 and G2:G12 in the example with separated X and Y ranges. Select the chart, and use Paste Special to add the data as before. The result is a set of gold dots added to the chart (below left). Excel again applies an XY chart type with markers and no lines and assigns the series to the primary axis. The X values of 3 position the gold dots above the third category along the X axis.

If you don’t need different colors for the different sets of dots, format them all the same (below right).

The technical dot plot is ready for publication.

Data Layout B – Single X with Multiple Y Series

The second data layout has a single set of X values with three sets of Y values, as shown below. This is easier than the previous data layout, because it requires only one Copy-Paste-Special cycle. Don’t worry about the blank cells; Excel will ignore them in the chart.

You also need a small table with the category names and zero values. From this small table, you insert a column chart. The chart appears to contain no data, because the zero values produce bars with zero height. Format this chart now (or later) as appropriate.

Select and copy the data range (B2:E32 in the example above). Select the chart, then go to Home tab > Paste dropdown > Paste Special, and choose the options shown in the dialog below, to add the data as new series, values in columns, series name in first row, categories in first column.

This results in the data being added as three new column series (below left). The categories are temporarily messed up: the new series have many more points, forcing the three original categories to the left.

Right click on the first added series, and choose Change Series Chart Type from the pop-up menu. Choose the XY Scatter type with markers and no lines. The result is a set of orange dots, plus secondary X and Y axes added to the chart (below right).

Change the chart type of the second and third added series from column to XY Scatter, so that there are three sets of colored dots on the secondary axes (below left).

Select the first series of dots and press Ctrl+1 (numeral one), the shortcut to open the Format Selected Object in Excel. Change the series from secondary to primary axis. Without an explicit X axis for the series, the X values of 1 align the points above the first category along the horizontal axis (below right).

Format the second and third set of dots so they are also plotted on the primary axis (below left). The X values of 2 and 3 position the dots above the second and third categories on the X axis.

Excel 2013 introduced a new Change Chart Type dialog which allows you to change chart types and axis of multiple series at once; this greatly streamlines the process to build a combination chart like this.

If you don’t need different colors for the different sets of dots, format them all the same (below right).

The technical dot plot is ready to go.

Data Layout C – Single X and Y Series

The third data layout has a single set of X values and a single set of Y values, as shown below. This is the easiest of all, because it requires only one Copy-Paste-Special cycle, and there is only one series to be modified once it’s been added to the chart.

Select the series of orange dots and press Ctrl+1 (numeral one), the shortcut to open the Format Selected Object in Excel. Change the series from secondary to primary axis. Without an explicit X axis for the series, the X values of 1, 2, and 3 align the points above the first, second, and third category along the horizontal axis (below right).

Excel 2013 introduced a new Change Chart Type dialog which allows you to change chart types and axis of multiple series at once; this greatly simplifies formatting of a combination chart like this.

If you don’t need different colors for the different sets of dots, format them all the same (below right).

Your new technical dot plot is good to go.

Posted: Friday, January 29th, 2016 under Chart Types.
Tags: Combination Charts, Dot Plots.
Comments: 23

Column Chart with Category Axis Labels Between Columns

Friday, August 21, 2015 by Jon Peltier 7 Comments

Friday, August 21, 2015 by Jon Peltier
Peltier Technical Services, Inc., Copyright © 2023, All rights reserved.

In Stacked column chart in Excel with the label of x-axis between the bars, a SuperUser user posted this chart, asking how to get the labels between the columns, instead of under the columns, where Excel puts them. This is a great tutorial, so I’m repeating my answer here.

We’re going to use a dummy (hidden) XY series on the chart, whose data labels will become the labels we want our axis to display.

We’ll start with two sets of data. The first (below left) is the data for the stacked columns, using simple counting numbers for the categories. The second (below right) is XY data where X is the list of values where we want our labels, and Y is zero.

Select the first set of data and insert a stacked column chart.

Copy the second range, select the chart, and use Paste Special (Home tab of the ribbon > Paste button dropdown > Paste Special), and select the following options: Add data as series, series in columns, series names in first row, categories in first column.

The new series is added as a third set of stacked bars, which don’t show up because their height is zero.

Select the added series by selecting the green bars and clicking the up arrow key. Click the menu key (between the right Alt and Ctrl buttons on most Windows keyboards) or hold Shift and click the F10 function key to pop up the context menu. Click Change Series Chart Type, and choose XY Scatter. This adds a set of markers along the bottom of the chart (I used blue circles in the chart below) and it adds secondary X and Y axes.

Format the scale of the secondary horizontal axis (top of chart) so it fits the data: min = -115, max = -50. Note that the blue circles are now aligned between the bars, where the labels will go.

Hide the secondary X and Y axes by formatting their label position as No Label, and their line color as No Line. This hides the labels and reduces the margin around the chart that previously held the labels.

Hide the primary horizontal labels by using a custom number format of ” ” (that’s right, a space surrounded by double quotes). This hides the labels but keeps the margin in place for the other labels we’re going to add.

Right-click the series of blue dots, and choose Add Data Labels. Excel adds the default Y values (zeros) to the right of the markers.

Format the labels so they are in the Below position, and so they show the X values instead of the Y values.

Finally format the series of dots so they use no markers. And we’re done.

This technique can be used to customize axis labels and add many other labels to your charts.

Posted: Friday, August 21st, 2015 under Chart Axes.
Tags: Axis Labels, Column Charts, Combination Charts, dummy series.
Comments: 7

Swimmer Plots in Excel

Monday, September 8, 2014 by Jon Peltier 11 Comments

Monday, September 8, 2014 by Jon Peltier
Peltier Technical Services, Inc., Copyright © 2023, All rights reserved.

A reader of the Peltier Tech Blog asked me about Swimmer Plots. The first chart below is taken from “Swimmer Plot: Tell a Graphical Story of Your Time to Response Data Using PROC SGPLOT (pdf)“, by Stacey Phillips, via Swimmer Plot by Sanjay Matange on the Graphically Speaking SAS blog.

The swimmer chart below is an attempt to show the responses of several patients to drug treatments. Each horizontal stripe represent a patient’s history, color coded by the stage of the patient’s disease at the onset of treatment at month zero. Different events are plotted within each patient’s stripe. The term “Swimmer Plot” comes from the resemblance to lanes in a swimming pool, where swimmers (events) must stay in their own lanes.

Swimmer Plot

The paper cited above gives a detailed protocol and related code for constructing this chart in a statistical graphics package that I’ve never used. The Peltier Tech blog reader wondered if there was a way to build this chart in Excel without having to draw shapes on the chart and locating them inexactly with the mouse.

I’m never one to pass up a reasonable challenge in Excel charting, so I decided to give it a try. This is the kind of chart that can probably be adapted to a variety of uses, and it’s a great way to help people learn how to think outside their usual approaches, to push Excel beyond its supposed limits.

The Approach

One’s first thought might be to build a horizontal bar chart, then use XY scatter data series for the various symbols on the bars. The arrows would have to be shapes drawn on the chart. This mixture of bar and XY chart types causes problems when trying to synchronize axes and aligning markers with bars.

On second thought, though, this chart can be built using XY chart series exclusively. The thick horizontal bands can be made from thick-lined error bars. The arrows at the end of certain bands can also be made using error bars. The only shape needed is for the arrow in the legend.

This entire protocol is one of my longest ever, but it will be worth the ride.

Swimmer Plot Data

All of the data in the chart conforms to two axes. The horizontal (X) axis shows months, either the total duration of the patient’s history or the treatment events. The vertical (Y) axis is simply the index of the subjects (patients): subject 1 is the bottom band in the chart and its associated symbols, subject 2 is the second band and symbols, on up to subject 10 at the top of the chart. In this example, the X axis data has been color coded blue and the Y axis data orange.

This first set of data shows the endpoints of the patient histories. Patients 10 and 3 have month data (18.2 and 9.5 months) in the Stage 1 column, patients 9, 5, and 1 in the Stage 2 column, etc. I optically extracted this data from the chart above before I realized it was included in the pdf article. I’ll take responsibility for any transcription errors.

Swimmer Plot Main Data

Each set of markers in the chart need X (month) and Y (subject) data. The ranges below show data for the four sets of markers and the set of arrows that will be added to the chart.

Swimmer Plot Supplemental Data

Building the Chart: The Swimmer Lanes

The first block of data is used to create the bands in the swimmer chart. Excel’s usual arrangement is to have X values in the first column of the data range and one or more columns of Y values to the right. Our data has Y values in the last column, and several columns of X values to the left. So putting this data into the chart will take a few steps.

Select the Disease Stage 1 column of data, and hold down the Ctrl key to select the unlabeled column of subject indices, then insert an XY Scatter chart. Most of the Disease Stage 1 column is blank, so only two points appear.

Swimmer Plot Construction

I’ve already stretched the chart above to its final size, and I’ve scaled the axes using their ultimate scale parameters. The X axis extends to -1 to allow room for the Durable Responder indicators.

The chart below has had the tick marks and labels removed from the vertical (Y) axis. Note that I’m leaving out chart and axis titles and other annotations to avoid distractions.

Swimmer Plot Construction

Now the next three Disease Stage series must be added. You can do this in at least two ways. My favorite is to select and copy the data, using the Ctrl key if needed to select discontiguous regions, then select the chart and use Paste Special from the Home tab. Use the settings on the screen shot below: add data as new series, values in columns, series names in first row, categories in first column.

Paste Special Dialog

Alternatively, right click on the chart and choose Edit Data from the popup menu or click on Edit Data on the Chart Tools > Design tab to open the Select Data Source dialog. Click the Add button, then populate the Edit Series dialog with the ranges containing the data for the new series.

Select Data Dialog

Repeat until all of the Disease Stages are potted on the chart.

Swimmer Plot Construction

I’ve formatted the markers with the desired formatting for the swimmer plot lanes. Basically I picked four colors that were a bit darker than in the original chart from the cited paper, and lightened them by applying 30% transparency.

Shameless Plug

Previously I noted that the Disease Stage data for this chart was listed with several columns of X data and one column of (shared) Y data. This differs from Excel’s assumption that the data consists of one column of (shared) X data and several columns of Y data. Because of this data arrangement, the chart has to be created tediously, one series at a time.

Such tedium isn’t necessary, however. Using Peltier Tech Charts for Excel, I was able to use the Quick XY Charts feature to create the chart with all of these series in one shot.

Peltier Tech Chart Utility - Quick XY Charts

I selected the data, clicked on the Quick Charts button on the Peltier Tech ribbon, selected Series in Columns and the X-X-Y data layout (highlighted above). The result was this XY Scatter chart, which requires much less manipulation to generate our Swimmer Plot.

Quick XY Swimmer Chart

The series need to be formatted: square markers with the colors and transparency described above and no lines. Also the legend should be moved to the right of the chart.

Back to the Lanes

We’ll use thick error bars as the swimmer lanes. Select one series and add error bars using the “+” icon in Excel 2013…

Add Error Bars in Excel 2013

… or using the Chart Tools > Layout tab in Excel 2007 and 2010.

Add Error Bars in Excel 2007-2010

Excel adds horizontal and vertical error bars to an XY series.

Swimmer Plot Construction

Select the vertical error bars, and click the Delete key. Then select the horizontal error bars and press Ctrl+1 (numeral one) to open the format dialog or task pane. This is the Excel 2013 task pane, but the Excel 2007-2010 format dialog is essentially the same.

Format Error Bars

Select the options shown above: Minus direction only, No End Caps, and Percentage using 100%. The chart below shows Minus 100% error bars with End Caps not removed.

Swimmer Plot Construction

Format the error bar lines with the colors used for the markers, and select a thickness for the bars which will be suitable for the chart.

Format Error Bar Lines

Hey look, bars without a bar chart.

Swimmer Plot Construction

Add and format error bars for the rest of the Disease Stage series.

Swimmer Plot Construction

We need to remove the markers from the chart without removing them from the legend. We have to trick Excel into thinking each series in the legend is formatted with markers while each point is formatted without.Click once to select a series, then again to select a marker, then click Ctrl+1 to open the formatting dialog or task pane for the single point, and choose the No Marker option. The marker from the top Stage 1 point has been removed in this chart:

Swimmer Plot Construction

Repeat; all Stage 1 markers are hidden below:

Swimmer Plot Construction

And repeat for all of the markers:

Swimmer Plot Construction

Add the Treatment Events

Several sets of XY markers are now added. You can copy the data,select the chart, and use Paste Special as described above, or you can use the Select Data Source dialog.

Here is the chart with Complete Response Start markers added to the lanes, with the markers formatted as red triangles like those in the example chart.

Swimmer Plot Construction

Now Partial Response Start points have been added.

Swimmer Plot Construction

Finally, Response Episode End has been added.

Swimmer Plot Construction

Add the Continuation Arrows

The continued Response data is displayed not as markers but as arrows, indicating that the activity extends further to the right than the lanes. This is easy to do with an XY series that shows no markers but instead has error bars with arrowheads on the ends of the bars.

First, add the data as a new series with no markers and a heavy black line. The heavy dark line will somewhat resemble the arrows in the legend.

Swimmer Plot Construction

Add error bars (use the same method as for the error bar lanes above).

Swimmer Plot Construction

Select and delete the vertical error bars as before, then format the horizontal error bars as follows: Plus direction only, No End Caps, and a Fixed Value of 1 (e.g., one month along the X axis).

Format Error Bars

Then format the error bar lines as medium thickness black lines with the appropriate arrowhead type and size. The “begin” arrow points toward the markers, the “end” arrow points away.

Format Error Bar Arrows

The result is a set of arrows extending beyond some of the swimming lanes.

Swimmer Plot Construction

Now we need to remove the black lines from the chart without removing them from the legend. In the same way we hid the unwanted markers from the chart but kept them in the legend to denote the lanes, we can select the entire series with one click, then select one individual line segment, then press Ctrl+1 and format this segment as No Line.

Here the first segment has been hidden.

Swimmer Plot Construction

Now the second segment is hidden.

Swimmer Plot Construction

A few clicks later, all traces of the line are gone.

Swimmer Plot Construction

Add Durable Responder Indicators

Finally, the Durable Responder data is added to the chart. The -0.25 X values place the markers just left of the vertical axis and the start of the lanes.

Swimmer Plot Construction

Final Adjustments

A couple small adjustments improve the look of the chart. First, the vertical axis scale of 0 to 11 leaves rather wide margins above and below the data. If the axis scale min and max are changed to 0.25 and 10.75, this margin is slightly reduced.

The -1 horizontal axis minimum is strange, but changing the horizontal axis number format to 0;;0 hides the negative value.

Swimmer Plot Construction

Finally, if the thick black line is not acceptable as a legend marker for the Continued Response arrows, you can use an arrow for the legend entry.

First, use a white line instead of the black line for the series lines, then hide each segment of this line as you hid the black line segments; this places a white line in the legend. If you had formatted the series as No Line, the line in the legend would not be there, and the markers would be squeezed right up against the legend labels, which does not leave room for a centered arrow.

Then insert an arrow from the Insert Shapes gallery on the ribbon. Format it as a heavy line with the matching arrow appearance. Drag it into the desired position in front of the Continued Response label.

Swimmer Plot Construction

Wrap Up

Charts like this swimmer plot, the related Gantt chart, and other charts were difficult to make in Excel 2003 and earlier versions of Excel. You needed to combine stacked bar chart and XY scatter chart data in the same chart. This required special effort to ;ine up the XY markers with the bars, and keep them aligned.

Excel 2007 introduced much more flexibility in formatting of lines, so you can make thick bars with any line segments, such as series connecting lines and error bars. Swimmer plots and Gantt charts are much easier to make and maintain, because markers and bars are easy to keep in place using a single set of axes.

Posted: Monday, September 8th, 2014 under Chart Types.
Tags: Combination Charts.
Comments: 11

Microsoft MVP Logo

Multiple Width Overlapping Column Chart

Thursday, December 12, 2013 by Jon Peltier 32 Comments

I read a post entitled Calling All Graph Wizards – Overlapping/Stacking Graphs w/o secondary axis on the Mr Excel forum today, and decided the question was broad enough and the answer quick and elegant enough that it was worth sharing.

The problem was that the user wanted to show projected and actual values of one variable as columns on the primary axis and of another variable as lines on the secondary axis.

If you only have the one variable, you can plot projected on the primary axis and actual on the secondary axis, then use a smaller gap width (wider bars) on the primary axis and a larger gap width (thinner bars) on the secondary.

Dual Column Width Chart Using Primary and Secondary Axis

But you can’t use two gap width settings if the columns must be plotted on the same axis. When you plot them, the taller bars in the front obscure the shorter bars in the back, so you can’t compare the values.

Mono Column Width Chart Using Only Primary Axis

But you can still make Excel do what you want. (In fact, you can almost always make Excel do what you want, if you know how.) I’ll describe two ways to accomplish this.

Option 1: Fill Bars with Rectangular Shapes

This approach was the original topic of this tutorial.

Draw two rectangles, pretty tall. The taller the better for visual quality of the chart. Make the thinner rectangle the color you want, and make the thicker one transparent. Make the widths of the two rectangles in the same proportion as the widths you want for the bars in the chart. Center the two rectangles horizontally.

Rectangles for Dual Column Width Chart

Select both rectangles, and copy (Ctrl+C). Select the series in the chart, and paste (Ctrl+V). The chart now uses the copied shapes as the fill for the selected series.

Dual Column Width Chart Using Only Primary Axis

Pretty easy, once you know how.

This comes in handy too if you need more than two widths. Without this trick, you couldn’t make the following chart even if you could use the primary and secondary axes:

Triple Column Width Chart Using Only Primary Axis

This requires two pairs of rectangles, a clear one and a relatively wide filled one for the second series, and a clear one and a relatively narrow filled one for the third. These are shown below:
Pairs of rectangles for bar chart fills

The advantage of this approach over the next is that the narrower bars keep their relative width, which is fixed by the ratio of filled rectangle to transparent rectangle used to fill the bars. The disadvantage is that if you want to adjust the width of the narrower bars, you need to adjust the width of the rectangles, then copy and paste onto the chart series.

Option 2: Error Bars with Multiple Widths

My colleague Andy Pope has pointed out in the comments that another approach for this effect is to use error bars for the narrower bars. In Excel 2003 and earlier, you had few options for line width, but since Excel 2007, you can make lines of seemingly any arbitrary thickness.

I’ll show Andy’s technique for three sets of bars. It’s even easier for two sets of bars.

I’ll start with the original column chart, setting overlap temporarily to zero so the different sets of error bars don’t obscure each other. The first thing to do is hide the bars you want to display narrower, that is, use no fill color for them. I’ve kept a colored outline to show what’s going on.

Using Error Bars for Multiple Width Chart Series Bars

Add error bars to the series you want to show as narrower bars.

Customize the error bars using the Minus Only, No Caps, and 100% Percentage value options.

Using Error Bars for Multiple Width Chart Series Bars

Now comes the magic. Apply the desired line colors to the error bars, and make the error bar lines thicker. Here I’ve used 11.25 pt for the orange bars and 5.75 pt for the blue bars.

Then I’ve hidden the outlines of the original bars.

Using Error Bars for Multiple Width Chart Series Bars

Change the overlap back to 100 so the bars are all centered on the categories (the month labels).

This has made the unchanged bars for Plan much wider, so we need to adjust the line widths of our error bars. I’ve settled on 30 pt for the orange and 12 pt for the blue.

Using Error Bars for Multiple Width Chart Series Bars

I used a little trick to reapply the bar colors to the legend. When I made the bars transparent, I started with the entire series formatted with the desired color. Then I selected one bar at a time instead of the entire series, and used no fill for the bar. Working point-by-point in this way leads Excel to believe that the series as a whole has not been changed, so it leaves the legend entries alone.

The disadvantage of the error bar approach is that any reformatting that changes the widths of the original bars (changing overlap, adding points to each series, stretching the chart) will distort the relative widths of the error bars and the original bars.

The advantage is that these widths can be adjusted very easily by formatting the error bar lines, without having to fiddle with the widths of the rectangles which must then be copied and pasted onto the series bars.

Posted: Thursday, December 12th, 2013 under Formatting.
Tags: Column Charts, Combination Charts.
Comments: 32

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Combination Charts

Combination Charts in Excel

Bar-XY Combination Chart

More Combination Chart Articles on the Peltier Tech Blog

What’s a “Technical” Dot Plot?

Other Kinds of Dot Plot

“Cleveland” Dot Plot

“Kindergarten” Dot Plot

Scatter Plot

Make a Technical Dot Plot

Data Layout A – Multiple X and Y Series

Data Layout B – Single X with Multiple Y Series

Data Layout C – Single X and Y Series

The Approach

Swimmer Plot Data

Building the Chart: The Swimmer Lanes

Shameless Plug

Back to the Lanes

Add the Treatment Events

Add the Continuation Arrows

Add Durable Responder Indicators

Final Adjustments

Wrap Up

Option 1: Fill Bars with Rectangular Shapes

Option 2: Error Bars with Multiple Widths