Programs to make a bar graph

About This Article. Written by:. Co-authors: Updated: January 7, Categories: Microsoft Excel Graphs. Deutsch: Ein Balkendiagramm in Excel erstellen. Nederlands: Een staafdiagram maken in Excel. Thanks to all authors for creating a page that has been read 1,, times.

It had been a long time since I used Excel. This was a perfect refresher, and my boss loved the chart I made! Thank you! More reader stories Hide reader stories. Is this article up to date? Cookies make wikiHow better. By continuing to use our site, you agree to our cookie policy.

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A bar chart or a bar graph is one of the easiest ways to present your data in Excel, where horizontal bars are used to compare data values. While you can potentially turn any set of Excel data into a bar chart, It makes more sense to do this with data when straight comparisons are possible, such as comparing the sales data for a number of products.

You can also create combo charts in Excel , where bar charts can be combined with other chart types to show two types of data together. For more complex comparisons, alternative chart types like histograms might be better options. To insert a bar chart in Microsoft Excel, open your Excel workbook and select your data. Excel will automatically take the data from your data set to create the chart on the same worksheet, using your column labels to set axis and chart titles.

You can move or resize the chart to another position on the same worksheet, or cut or copy the chart to another worksheet or workbook file. For our example, the sales data has been converted into a bar chart showing a comparison of the number of sales for each electronic product. For this set of data, mice were bought the least with 9 sales, while headphones were bought the most with 55 sales.

This comparison is visually obvious from the chart as presented. By default, a bar chart in Excel is created using a set style, with a title for the chart extrapolated from one of the column labels if available. You can make many formatting changes to your chart, should you wish to. You can change the color and style of your chart, change the chart title, as well as add or edit axis labels on both sides.

This would be especially important for sales data, where a trendline could visualize decreasing or increasing number of sales over time. To change the title text for a bar chart, double-click the title text box above the chart itself. Axis labels should appear for both the x axis at the bottom and the y axis on the left. These will appear as text boxes. To edit the labels, double-click the text boxes next to each axis.

Microsoft Excel offers a number of chart themes named styles that you can apply to your bar chart. Users familiar with MS Office will become familiar with Edraw soon. The first way to set chart data is loading data from file. You can copy the example text included in the User Guide to newly created text. Rest the pointer over the shape to show the floating button. Point over the button and click a menu needed to make necessary change.

Bar charts are designed for visual representation of data so that comparisons and trends will be clearer. With lots of pre-drawn bar graph examples and more than symbols, charting has never been so easy!

The picture below is the bar chart symbols in our software which will be of great help when you draw bar charts. Cylinder bar is also available with a 3-D visual effect to place focus on comparing the values. An editable example of sales comparison bar chart is provided on the right. Use it to present your own bar charts. LibreOffice is a popular free and open source office suite for Windows, Linux, Mac, etc.

It consists of various utilities like word processor, spreadsheet creator, drawing application, etc. To create a bar graph, you need to use its spreadsheet application i. LibreOffice Calc. Simply open LibreOffice Calc and add data entries to the blank spreadsheet. After creating or editing the spreadsheet, select desired data entries to plot respective bar graph. Now, you just need to click Chart option from Insert menu and choose plot type as Bar Graph.

This will create a normal bar graph. To personalize it, you get following options in the Chart Wizard:. Plus, you can export it as a PDF too using the same option. LibreOffice is a great alternative to create a bar graph. You can also make use of its various additional tools like mathematical functions, formulas, spellcheck, protect spreadsheet, etc.

SoftMaker FreeOffice , as the name implies, is a free office software. It comes with a PlanMaker application which can be used as a bar chart maker or any other chart maker line, area, bubble, radar, scatter, etc. Its a spreadsheet maker where you need to create a spreadsheet by adding data entries manually or importing an existing spreadsheet.

Now, follow these simple steps to create a bar graph:. SoftMaker FreeOffice contains a wide list of features to create documents, spreadsheets, etc. You can checkout its feature list on the link given below. WPS Office is another office software which can be used as a bar graph maker. Like other office suites, its spreadsheet program is needed to create a bar graph. The procedure to create a bar graph is same as above discussed software.