In the drop-down menu, select Format Data Series. Step 1. Right-click on any of the colored bars. Let’s reduce that spacing! There are only two steps. Our eyes are supposed to see the distribution as a seamless, unified shape rather than as a bunch of distinct bars. Histograms, in particular, are supposed to be smushed together. This huge space looks odd in a regular bar chart and horrible in a histogram. If each bar is 1 centimeter wide, then the space between the bars will be 1.5 centimeters wide. What’s with all that empty white space in between the vertical bars?!īy default, Microsoft Excel spaces the bars 150% apart from each other. … but your chart still looks weird because the bars are so far apart.
You carefully formatted your histogram: you removed the border, lightened the grid lines, wrote a descriptive title and subtitle, selected custom RGB color codes, and called attention to a section of the graph with the saturated action color…
Let’s pretend you’re graphing age distributions for a given county. Wondering how to widen the bars in your bar or column chart? Or how to move the bars or columns closer together? This tutorial is for you!
