Working with Bar Charts

About Bar Charts

A bar chart represents the values of category data by using bars. The height of each bar represents the value.

Specify Properties for a Bar Chart

On the Properties tab, you can specify the following options:

Name

specifies the name of the visualization.

Graph title

specifies the title that appears above the graph.

Note: The Graph title is disabled if you select Generate graph titles.

Generate graph titles

specifies that the graph title is generated automatically based on the data items in the visualization.

Show grid lines

displays grid lines for each tick on the response axis.

Bar direction

specifies whether the bars are vertical or horizontal.

Grouping style

specifies how grouped data are displayed. If you select Stacks, then the values of the grouping variable are displayed as segments of each bar. If you select Colors, then each value of the grouping variable is displayed as a separate bar.

Note: This option is disabled if no data item is assigned to the grouping role.

Measure layout

specifies whether the measures share a single response axis (Shared axis) or have separate response axes for each measure (Separate axes).

Note: The Measure layout option is disabled if your visualization contains exactly one measure.

Overview

specifies whether the chart overview is enabled.

Show data values

shows the data values as text in the visualization.

Note: You can always view the data values as data tips when you move the cursor over the graph.

Category label policy

specifies how the values for the category axis are displayed when there is not enough space. Select one of the following options:

Automatic

specifies that the visualization will select the best label policy according to your data and the space requirements.

Stagger

places the labels with an alternating vertical offset.

Thin

displays a subset of the labels.

Rotate

displays the labels at an angle

Note: The Category label policy option has no effect when you select a horizontal bar orientation.

Data Roles for a Bar Chart

The basic data roles for a bar chart are categories and measures. You can assign one category only, and the values of the category are plotted on the category axis. You can assign many measures, and the measure values are plotted on the response axis. If a bar chart contains no measures, then the frequency of the category values is plotted on the response axis.

In addition to the basic data roles, you can assign additional roles:

Grouping

groups the data according to the values of the category data item that you assign. Depending on the value that you selected for the Grouping style property, the group values are either shown as individual bars or as segments of each bar.

Note: Grouping is not available if you assign multiple measures to the visualization.

Horizontal series

creates a horizontal series of charts for each value of the category data item that you assign.

Vertical series

creates a vertical series of charts for each value of the category data item that you assign.

Sort Data Values

By default, a bar chart is sorted alphabetically by the values of the category data item. To change the sorting, right-click the data item that you want to sort on, and then select Sort

[sort-method].