What is Excel Grouped Bar Chart?
Excel grouped bar chart is the combination of showing different time period numbers that belong to a single category or group. Here we group together all the data of a single group into one and show the result with the bar chart. This is slightly different than the insert a bar chart in excel where a simple bar chart doesn’t require any special data arrangement but this grouped chart requires data to be arranged in order before we create a chart.
Create a Grouped Bar Chart in Excel? (with Step by Step Example)
A typical example of showing a grouped bar chart is sale numbers of different zones on a monthly basis. For example look at the below data.
In this data, we have month name and zone name and then Revenue for each zone in each month. We need to show the chart for these numbers. Let’s insert Column bar chart.
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- Step 1: Select the data and insert the CLUSTERED COLUMN CHART.
- Step 2: Click on OK, we will have a clustered bar chart now.
- Step 3: When you see the chart this is a normal column chart, but it is showing different month revenue of a single zone together. In the above example, each zone split into a different month, so first, we need to arrange data based on Zone-wise.
- Step 4: Then insert a blank row after every zone.
- Step 5: Now retain only one zone name and delete duplicate zone names.
- Step 6: After this interchange Month & Zone columns.
- Step 7: Now insert the CLUSTERED COLUMN CHART for this data.
Step 8: Now you can see the X-Axis each zone different months comes together under a single group. In this chart, we need to make some formatting settings here. Select bar and press Ctrl + 1 which will open up the “Format Data Series” option to the right of the chart.
Step 9: In this “Format Data Series,” option makes “Gap Width” to 0%.
- Step 10: As we can see in the above image as soon as we make the “Gap Width” to 0% all the bars are combined together. Now with the same selection go to FILL option under “Format Data Series” and under this check, the box “Vary Colors by Point”.
Since we have chosen “Vary Colors by Point” each bar has changed to a different color. This is the procedure involved in creating a chart.
Clustered Column Chart to Clustered Bar Grouped Chart
The chart that we have already created can be changed from the “Clustered Column” to the “Clustered Bar” chart as well. Follow the below steps to change the chart type.
- Step 1: Select the chart first. After the selection, we can see two new tabs opens up at the ribbon “Design” & “Format”. Go to “Design” and choose “Change Chart Type”.
- Step 2: After we click on “Change Chart Type” we can see below window.
- Step 3: In this click on “Bar”.
- Step 4: In this bar, we can see multiple chart options, select the appropriate chart. As we can select the chart we can see the preview as well below.
- Step 5: Click on OK, we will have the same formatted but clustered bar chart now.
Things to Remember
- To group bars first, we need to arrange the data in order.
- Once chart inserted we need to make the Gap Width of each bar to 0%.
- Select “Vary Color by Point” to have different colors for each bar.
Recommended Articles
This has been a guide to Grouped Bar Chart. Here we discuss how to create a grouped bar chart in excel along with a practical example and a downloadable template. You may learn more about excel from the following articles –
- Animation Chart in Excel
- Chart Wizard in Excel
- Make Gantt Chart in Excel
- Data Bars in Excel
- Mixed References in Excel
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