Legend At the Top

June 26, 2023 - by Bill Jelen

Problem: Excel always adds a legend on the right side of the chart. Visualization gurus say the legend should be at the top or left of the chart. You don’t even need a legend for a one-series chart.

Strategy: Use Layout, Legend, Show Legend at Top.

Choose to show the Legend at Top — Figure 1161. Move the legend to the top.

When you have an Excel 2010 chart with a single series, Excel adds the series name as both the title and the legend. This is definitely overkill. Click the Legend and then press the Delete key on your keyboard. This is fixed in Excel 2013 - a chart with a single series will not have a legend.

A snarky chart. The title is Percent of People Who Agree a Single Series Chart Does Not Need a Legend. To the right of the chart is a legend that says: Percent of People Who Agree a Single Series Chart Does Not Need a Legend. The four columns are 100% in New York and Chicago, 80% in the North Pole, but only 20% in Redmond. — Figure 1162. Delete the legend when you have only one series.

If you would double-click any chart element a Task Pane appears on the right side of the screen. The task pane is labelled with a series of icons.

My general rule: always start with the Column Chart icon - the best choices are often there.

The Format Axis pane is massively confusing. The first level of menu are two tabs that say Axis Options or Text Options. Within Axis Options, there are four icons: Painbrush, Pentagon with Shadow, Resize, and then the icon with a column chart. That last icon often has the useful settings. — Figure 1163. Each circled item shows different choices below.

This article is an excerpt from Power Excel With MrExcel

Title photo by Jess Bailey on Unsplash