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About this lesson
In this module we will take a look at creating bar and column charts to display our data.
Exercise files
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Bar & Column Charts449.9 KB Bar & Column Charts - Completed
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Quick reference
Bar & Column Charts
Working with Bar and Column charts in Power BI.
When to use
Clustered Bar and Column charts are very useful for comparing values to each other, stacked charts are useful for showing buildup and 100% stacked charts are great for showing the portion of a whole.
Instructions
Bar and Column charts are very similar, essentially just 90 degrees different. (Column charts stand up, bar charts fell over.)
Types of Bar and Column Charts
- Stacked
- 100% Stacked
- Clustered
Layout
- Drag your Field into the Axis area. The unique items in this field will be used for the primary axis (bottom for Column, left side for Bar)
- The alternate axis is calculated automatically
- The measure(s) to visualize should be dragged into the Value area
- Legends, tooltips and color saturation can also be configured
Formatting
- Dragging multiple fields into the Axis area will activate Drill Down
- Dragging multiple fields into the Value area will render stacked or side-by-side depending on the type of chart chosen
- Visual formatting can be done via the fields under the paint roller in the Visualizations area
- Trend lines can be found under the magnifying glass icon in the Visualizations area
Hints & tips
Common Modifications for bar and column charts
- Rename the Legend and force it to bottom
- Provide a custom title for the chart
- Turn on Data Labels and turn off the values axis (y axis for Column Charts, x axis for Bar Charts)
- 00:05 In this module, we're gonna look specifically at bar and column charts.
- 00:08 We're gonna start with the fresh canvass here and
- 00:11 then we need to create a new stacked bar chart right here.
- 00:14 What I'm gonna do is I'm gonna throw with two measures on this.
- 00:17 I'm gonna throw a budget on here and I'm gonna throw my sales on here as well.
- 00:22 And I might decide that maybe I want my sales to show up ahead of budget, so
- 00:26 I'll just move this until it snaps in there.
- 00:29 And when I'm at this point, I'm gonna go and add a category.
- 00:33 And you'll see that this is what it looks like when we
- 00:35 actually get a stacked bar chart.
- 00:38 Now, bar charts and column charts are the same thing, just rotated 90 degrees.
- 00:42 We have three types of each.
- 00:44 We have the stacked bar and the stacked column.
- 00:47 We have the clustered bar chart which actually shows the individual series so
- 00:51 they can be compared, and the clustered column chart.
- 00:54 We also have the 100% stacked bar chart which will show
- 00:57 everything as a proportion, and the 100% stacked column.
- 01:01 Personally, the ones that I find that I use the most are the clustered bar and
- 01:06 my clustered column charts.
- 01:08 So which you decide you like better is really up to you.
- 01:12 The key for all of these things is that we take our values and
- 01:14 drop them into the values area and we throw our access into the access area.
- 01:19 When we drop something into the access area, it automatically makes the opposite
- 01:22 access for us based on the proportion of what comes out of the value field.
- 01:26 So that's kind of nice, it actually sets it up, all ready to go and what not.
- 01:31 Now, you'll also find that if you drag multiple things into your access area
- 01:36 you can change the way this works because you'll activate drill downs.
- 01:39 So I could grab say, a location and put the location name on top of my axis.
- 01:44 Now at this point, I now have the drill down ability to say, here let's go in and
- 01:47 take a look at squints and that will now show me the sales that are here.
- 01:51 And if I want to drill even further down, I can go and add Item Name in here.
- 01:56 And now we'll say let's do a drill into wine and
- 01:58 I can see what my sales are made up.
- 02:00 One challenge I have here, I do not budget the level of sales item,
- 02:06 and that's why the budget is showing in full for each line,
- 02:09 so that doesn't make a lot of sense here.
- 02:11 So I'm actually gonna take this off because it's too much.
- 02:14 If I were doing that and I wanted to see the sales item,
- 02:17 I'd probably get rid of budget and try not to make a comparison there.
- 02:22 Some common things that we could change around this chart now, let's see.
- 02:25 We could go over to our formatting area and we could say, you know what,
- 02:30 the legend.
- 02:31 We have a legend on here right now, but
- 02:33 I'm not really sure I'm liking where it is, it should really be below.
- 02:35 So I'm gonna click on this and say, hey, let's change the legend to the bottom.
- 02:40 And that will actually move the legend down nicely to the bottom
- 02:43 of where it needs to be.
- 02:44 I could change the font size up a little bit, make it a little bit bigger, say ten.
- 02:48 And now, I could turn that off.
- 02:52 I don't need to necessarily show my y-axis if I have data labels.
- 02:57 So I'm gonna turn my data labels on, and you'll see they pop up above the chart.
- 03:01 And now I can turn my y-axis off when I don't need the grid lines or
- 03:04 anything else there.
- 03:05 So that's looking a little bit better, looks a little bit happier and whatnot.
- 03:08 And with the data labels, I even have the ability to go in and say, you know what,
- 03:13 let's go and change a little bit about this.
- 03:16 What is the display?
- 03:17 I'm gonna show it to display in thousands and
- 03:20 that's gonna give me something that looks okay.
- 03:23 I only want to have one decimal place on it,
- 03:26 there they are that's a little bit better.
- 03:29 And maybe I wanna change the data label size up a little bit to say 12 point,
- 03:33 maybe a little bit too big, let's go down to say 10 and let's leave it around there.
- 03:39 What else could I play around with in here?
- 03:41 I know, how about the title.
- 03:43 We have a title.
- 03:46 The title is called Sales Dollars and Budget Dollars by Location, Name, and
- 03:49 Category.
- 03:50 So we could call this something different.
- 03:53 We could call this Sales versus Budget Analysis.
- 03:59 And just go with it without for right now.
- 04:02 We can change the font color to a nice black.
- 04:06 We'll put it centered above the chart.
- 04:08 And plainly, that chart title is too small.
- 04:10 Let's go and dial it up to say a 16 point and away we go.
- 04:14 So there's lots of options that we have to play around here.
- 04:16 Those are some common ones that I generally end up using for my bar and
- 04:20 column charts.
- 04:21 It all works with the drill down now.
- 04:23 As you can see, we can drill up, we can drill back down, we can
- 04:26 go into focus mode and see it even bigger, and it looks like it works quite nice.
- 04:30 So that is bar and column charts that are actually working there and
- 04:35 the different options that we have for formatting bills.
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