Clustered bar chart - bars not touching

[j.rose]

Hi - I posted a question last week that no-one has answered, either its
impossible to do or I didn't phrase it properly!

Re: Clustered bar chart
I have monthly data ranges with 5 possible values, eg May has 5 sales
figures, June has 5 sales figures, July 06 etc. When there are 5
non-zero values in one month the bars all touch each other and are
clearly defined as being from that month. The bars represented are in
a series order defined in the options. Where there are zero values
in a month, the series order remains and a space appears between the
bars. For example, if the data in June is 5, 0, 0, 0, 4 the bars
appear at the extreme right and left of the range with nothing in
between. This makes the graph difficult to 'read'. Is there anyway
to ask the bars to touch, ie ignore zero-value bars?

Failing that, is there anyway to insert vertical dividers between each
month's data so that the data is clearly defined.

Previous question: unanswered.
I have a data range per month with 5 possible values. When there are
non-zero results for all 5, the columns sit next to each other, which
is fine. However I'd like the columns to sit next to each other for
only the non-zero values, ie if there only two rows in my data range
that have non-zero values, there should be two columns on my chart next
to each other with no gaps between them. The range selection is as
follows: "=Sheet1!$A$61:$BD$66". In short, I'd like the column chart
to ignore the 0 values in the data range and not to plot them or leave
a space for them.

Hope you can help!

Many thanks in advance
Joyce

 

[Earl Kiosterud]

Joyce,

I think the question is how you want it to show the months with varying
sales values. One way would be to cluster the bars in the center or at the
left of each category (month, in this case), leaving the empty spaces at the
sides. Doable, but probably a bit tricky. It would likely mean making
another table of the data from which to chart.

Have you experimented with the Overlap and Gap width settings? Overlap
either makes the columns overlap, or if set negative, puts spaces between
the columns of a category -- probably not useful here. Gap width varies the
space between categories -- increasing that might be helpful. To do that,
right-click any column in the chart, Format Data Series - Options tab.