You can format a line chart to have no line and no markers, to avoid the background
colored line.

You can add a line series, hidden as above, using Y values to put the labels where
you want, then use a third party utility to assign labels to the points from another
worksheet range. Two such utilities that do this, both free and easy to install and
use, a

Rob Bovey's Chart Labeler, http://appspro.com
John Walkenbach's Chart Tools, http://j-walk.com

- Jon
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Jon Peltier, Microsoft Excel MVP
Peltier Technical Services
Tutorials and Custom Solutions
http://PeltierTech.com/
_______

Brenda wrote:

I have a bar graph showing payer mixes for our 3 business units, 6 bars for
each unit, with the data labels above each bar showing the percent of total.
Across the bottom of graph I would like to add the prior year percentages for
comparison, but I don't want to include that data in the graph - just display
the percentage.

I tried adding a text box with the information, but I'm not able to
consistently get it to line up with the current data. I also tried adding
individual text boxes linked to my data, but this was not ideal because of
the difficulty in lining them up as well. I also thought of adding the prior
year data to the graph as a line graph and then changing the color to match
the background so that it would not show, and then repositioning the data
labels to where I want them... but some of the lines ran through the bars,
showing a white line (that idea was in the middle of the night - worth a
shot, anyway).

Does anyone know how this might be done? Seems like it isn't too difficult
of a request and there should be a way...

Thanks!
Brenda