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Earl Kiosterud Earl Kiosterud is offline
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Default Trouble with Excel Stacking Bar Graphs

Joules,

I've not seen the colors assigned at random. The first series always seems to be yellow,
the second maroon, the third blue, etc. You can change the colors. Click on a column of a
series (only once) -- a handle should appear in each column of the series. Use the color
fill button on the drawing toolbar, or Format - Selected Data series. Now to use this color
scheme in other charts, right-click the chart - Chart Type, Custom Types tab -
User-Defined - Add.
--
Regards from Virginia Beach,

Earl Kiosterud
www.smokeylake.com
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"Joules" wrote in message
...
Hi,

I have some data from a research project that I am trying to graph in
Excel. I would like to place the scores ffir each subject in a
"stacked column". Additionally I would like to indicate each test
subject's contribution to the column by using a different color for
each subject. That is, when I list the scores for subjects A, B, and
C stacked one above each other it would appear as A is the color red
with a score of 4, B is green with a score of 5, and C is teal with a
score of 7. So, when someone looks at the graph they can see the
column height is 16 (4+5+7) and they can see that all the bars in the
color red are scores obtained by subject A, B is green, and C is
teal. Another column will be built from the scores of subjects D, E,
and F; the next column will be built from the test scores of subjects
G, H, and I, etc.

I listed the scores in a table in Excel and it built a bar graph that
looked pretty good, but the colors seemed to be assigned almost at
random; for example some times the score for subject A would be red,
and then some other color.

I thought I was making some progress by right clicking on the graph,
going to "Source Data" and entering the data location for the series
manually, but I could not figure out how to tell excel which column
was supposed to receive the data. If I hover the curser over a
collumn a label appears which says something like "Subject A" Point
"Column 2", and the data is in column 2 of the graph, but I want it to
be in column 3, or 4, or 5. How can I control which bar in the bar
graph gets the data from the series.

Thanks in advance,
Joules

Joules