Mastering Bar and Column Charts

Creating a bar or column chart. Let's do that. We're going to go to a new sheet.

Let's go to sheet 2. And the easiest way to create a column or bar chart is just to drag the fields into the rows and columns area. It doesn't matter which order you drag them in. I'm going to drag subcategory and I'm going to bring it into rows.

And then I'm going to take sales, which is a measure, and I'm going to move that into columns. By default, it doesn't take up the whole screen. That invisible line is here too.

When you see the double arrow, you can drag it. Sometimes it's hard to get to and you can make it whatever size you want. Your best option is just to go over here and choose entire view.

They should probably just make that the default. But you get to control that. I'm going to go over here and I'm going to rename this.

I'll call this bar chart. As we start to build these, we'll use this in our data visualization. They're really big now, but when you put them side by side, they'll resize to fit your dashboard.

The tooltips are there automatically. If you want to add labels, you could just type, click on the T right here. You don't even have to drag any fields from here.

Just click the T and it puts it right there. Let me see if there's anything else I want to tell you about creating a bar chart. It can be done with show me, just like you did with a chart, but it can also be done with drag and drop.

That's going to be the easiest option. You need to create the pie chart with show me, but with the bar chart, just drag and drop. It's easy to do.

Drag and drop is easier with column and bar charts. There is a horizontal bar chart here. I use category.

You can use show me to convert to other types of charts. You say, you know what? I want to take a look at other types of charts. Click here and you can do a tree map.

Oh, let me do this type. Oh, this is all together in one. It's not, it doesn't look that good.

Maybe a bubble chart. Oh, this is sort of like a word thing, box and whisker. Some are not going to be available by default, but you can take a look around and see which ones might work for you.

You might have to resize the entire, this is a text table. I'm going to go back to the column and then I'll choose entire view. The default title is the title for your sheet name, but you can also change this.

If you want to change this, all you have to do is double click on it. It opens up the same type of box that you had when we're adding the tool tip. You can use the sheet name, but you say, you know what? I don't want to use the sheet name.

I want to call this products. I'm going to make this bold and I'll increase the font size, maybe the 16 and I'll make the color blue. And then if I want to look at it before I click, okay, I can click apply and I see what it looks like.

Oh, you know what? That's not big enough. I'm going to go over here and make it big. So that's good that I didn't click.

Okay. Cause I can keep applying it and then seeing what it looks like. I'll click.

Okay. If you want a little bit more room here, you can move your mouse over and drag this over and create a little bit more room off to the side. So you have also a line here that separates the subcategory from the edge.

This is the products, but it's different from the sheet name. So you can do stuff here. You can add in whatever text you want.

In fact, I'll call this superstore products. I'll click. Okay.

Tool tips are automatic. I want to swap rows. I would like this to be a column chart.

So I'm going to right click here and the best way to do this duplicate I'll click duplicate. And then I'll click this one button here. And now I have a column chart and I can go out, go right here.

Rename this. This is now a column chart. If I want to add the labels one click, I click on T that's the easiest way to add the labels.

You'll probably notice that by default, it doesn't have currency. You can format it to have currency. Well, how would you do that? Well, what does this field represent sales? If you go to the sales field here, format is right there.

So like I said, most thing is going to be, most of the options are going to be on a right click or a click. And then here's format the default. I'll click here, choose currency, custom currency standard just means which country you want the currency from United States or pick any of these other countries, but custom.

That's what's going to add the dollar sign. It also adds the decimals. I'm going to go over here and I don't have, I don't even have to click.

Okay. There's it just does it automatically. I'll click outside of here and I've applied the format.

Maybe I'll add labels here too. Again, it doesn't do it automatically. How can you have this automatically add currency? There is an option for that.

You can make sure that by default, when you add this, it automatically goes to currency. I'll show you how to do that. You're going to go over to sales because that's the one you want to apply formatting to.

Then you want to go over to default properties. You can say the default property for the number format is currency. Now, anytime you add currency, it's going to default to the currency format.

I'll take this out. I'll click. Okay.

Now, if I go back and type T and click on T it automatically does it. I don't have to format it anymore. Automatically puts in currency.

You're going to go directly to the field. You're going to click the dropdown or right click, and you'll look for default properties. And then from default properties, you'll choose number format.

This has a drawback. This is very useful, but there's a drawback. Some of you may or may not have noticed it already.

Why is this in currency? I would like this to be in thousands increments. Well, you change the default properties. Wait a minute.

You're telling me if I change the default properties for this, it also changes it for… Yeah, that's… But how do I get this to thousands? You're going to have to go to format. When you go to format, the pane is the values inside the values area where the bars are. The axis is here, and this is where you're going to have to change this.

You'll go over to numbers. You'll choose currency custom. You'll choose display units, thousands K. I'll take out the decimals.

Now you have it the way that you want. So does that mean if I go back to the bar chart, it's going to change it? No. You have to also do the same thing.

Go to format. Click the dropdown here for scale. Choose currency, display units, thousands.

And then now that's the drawback. So in a way, you're changing them either way, but that's what they're paying you the salary for. You get to make those changes, unless they come up with some way where AI can do that.

I'm going to right-click anywhere in the area and choose format. What can you format here? Pick any field you want. When you click the dropdown here, you can choose the two fields that are available here.

If you choose subcategory, you're now formatting subcategory. If you click the dropdown and choose sales, now you're formatting sales in the access and the pane. Or what else could I format? Each of these buttons controls a different aspect of formatting for the sheet.

This is font. This is alignment. This is background color or shading.

What does shading do? Let me show you. This is easy. So for shading, this is for the whole worksheet.

It's not for a field. I'll do something like this. And then that controls the shading for the entire sheet.

Grid lines or borders. I can create borders here. Then I have these, I think, are the grid lines.

Yeah, these are the lines. I can control lines for the sheet, for the rows, and the columns. So yeah, you'll earn your PhD looking at all of these options.