Moving bars on a bar chart closer together

[Jiminio]

Hi,

I have a bar chart and for each month of the year I have two stacked bars. What I would like to do is to move the bars right next to each other for each month, at the moment there is a gap, however I would like to leave a gap between months.

Any ideas?

Many thanks, help most appreciated

 

[JimmyDodger]

Hi there, not quite sure what you are asking. You are saying you have two stacked bars for each month? How does that work?

If you haven't done it already I suggest you try right clicking on one of the bars > Format Data Series > Options Tab

and then playing with the "Overlap" and "Gap Width" settings

if that doesnt work, I suggest you post some of the data you want to chart and more details fo exactly what the problem is.

Cheers

 

[Andrew Poulsom]

Right click and choose Format Data Series. On the Options tab reduce the Gap width to zero.

 

[pathmarkpolice]

I have the same issue as this person. I have data that spans two years. I only want to compare the two months from each year against one another. I made a chart to display years only, however, the years are spread too far apart on the chart. I want to move them closer together. Formatting the data series only works on the individual bars themselves, and not the actual distance from one another my data looks like this:

(bar) (bar2)

I would like it to look like this on my chart:

(bar) (bar2)

How do I edit the chart to lessen that space?

 

[pathmarkpolice]

Ahhh, the spaces were left out of my example, here is what it should have looked like:

(bar)___________________(bar2)

and I want my chart to look like

(bar) (bar2)

How do I adjust this gap?

 

[Andrew Poulsom]

Can't you increase the Overlap and reduce the Gap width?

 

[Andy Pope]

Sounds like you have true date values on the category axis.
Try setting the axis to Text rather than Date.

in xl2003 this can be found on the Chart Options dialog.
for xl2007+ it's on the Format Axis dialog in the Axis Options section.

 

[pathmarkpolice]

Can't you increase the Overlap and reduce the Gap width?

I can, but that doesn't help bring the separate bars closer together, but that doesn't help me bridge that gap between the months, that I've disabled from being shown by showing "years" instead of "months" when I double click on the data range box of the chart.

 

[pathmarkpolice]

Sounds like you have true date values on the category axis.
Try setting the axis to Text rather than Date.

in xl2003 this can be found on the Chart Options dialog.
for xl2007+ it's on the Format Axis dialog in the Axis Options section.

Thanks so much! That was exactly it! I was playing around with it before, but never thought to select text. Thanks a lot, Andy, you're the man! Thanks for your prompt response as well, Andrew. You guys are awesome!