Using Bar Charts to Illustrate Item Comparisons in Excel 2007:-


Bar charts are perfect for comparing items. Bar charts offer a few advantages over column charts for comparing sales of various items:

1. People tend to associate column charts—or any other chart in which the data progresses from left to right—as having a time-based component. When you turn the columns on their sides and make them horizontal bars, people tend not to read time into the equation.

2. With a column chart, the category names can appear in a horizontal orientation, giving plenty of room for longer names. In the chart shown in the Figure (given below), for example, the category names take almost half the chart, but there is still room to get the point across that the “Excel for” series is not selling as well as the general-purpose Excel books.



(A bar chart allows for lengthy category names and a comparison of different product lines.)

Bar charts are oriented with the first item in the list closest to the bottom of the chart. If you expect people to read a chart from top to bottom, you should sort the categories into descending alphabetical sequence (by clicking the ZA button in the Data ribbon). The bar chart in the above Figure compares sales of six different product lines. It is easy to spot the winners in the chart. The original dataset is sorted to have the VBA title at the top of the spreadsheet.

Above Figure uses a clustered bar chart type, although it has only one series to report. Other alternatives are the clustered bar in 3-D, clustered horizontal cylinder, clustered horizontal cone, or clustered horizontal pyramid. For a more powerful arrangement of data, you can sort these categories into ascending sequence, by sales. Excel then plots the largest category at the top of the chart. Even more than the chart in the above Figure, the chart shown in the Figure (given below) depicts a clear delineation between the winners and losers.



(You can sort the data by ascending sales in order to show the largest bars at the top of the chart.)

If you think it is silly to have to sort your data into the reverse order from which you want to present it in the chart, there is a setting buried deep in the ribbon that you can use to correct this logic: you can choose Layout, Axes, Primary Vertical Axis, Show Right to Left Axis in order to show the first row in your dataset at the top of the chart. Alternatively, you can right-click the category labels, choose Format Axis, and choose the Categories in Reverse Order check box. Look into the Figure (given below).



(Instead of sorting your data in reverse order, you could sort the data in normal order and then specify reverse order for the categories.)