If you make a pivot chart in Excel, you might wonder why all the columns are the same colour. The video below shows a quick fix for that pivot chart problem, and create columns in different colours.
Video: Fix Pivot Chart All Columns One Color
In this video’s example, the pivot chart shows sales data, per city, over two years.
- At first, all the chart columns are the same color, because there is only one series.
- To create columns with different colours, the field arrangement is changed.
Watch this short video, to see the simple steps for fixing the chart.
- Note: If you need help with creating a pivot chart, there are step-by-step instructions on the Pivot Chart Source Data page.
Pivot Chart – All Columns Same Colour
When the chart was created, the Year and City fields were both in the Rows area.
Because of that layout, the chart had only one series – Total — so all the columns were the same color.
Make Columns Different Colours
To fix the chart columns, so each year is in a different colour, you can make a simple change to the pivot chart layout.
- NOTE: Changing the pivot chart layout will make the save change to its source pivot table’s layout. The video in the next section shows an example of that problem, and a workaround to fix it.
In this example, I moved the Order Year field into the Legend area (Column area in a pivot table).
That creates a separate series for each year, with one year in blue, and the other year in orange.
The chart legend shows the colour code for the two series.
Video: Changing Pivot Chart Layout Affects Pivot Table
After you create a pivot table, you can insert a pivot chart, based on that pivot table.
However, if you change the layout of the pivot chart, it will also change the pivot table’s layout.
There isn’t any setting you can change that will disconnect the two. Instead, you can make a copy of the pivot table, and hide the original pivot table.
Then, when you change the visible pivot table, it won’t affect the chart, and vice versa.
Get Excel Sample File
To see more pivot chart layout tips and videos, go to the Excel Pivot Chart Layout page on my Contextures site.
There is a pivot chart sample file that you can download, to experiment with the pivot chart layout tips.
The zipped Excel file is in xlsx format, and does not contain any macros.
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Fix Pivot Chart All Columns One Colour
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