A Bar of a Different Color

When you create charts in MS Excel that have only one series of data, especially bar type charts, do you find yourself bored with it? They are all the same color. If you're looking to liven things up then why not do something about the color… or lack of it!

Once your chart is created, right-click on one of the bars and choose Format Data Series.

In older versions of Excel you'll see a dialog box that starts with "Delete" and ends with "Format Data Series" - click on Format Data Series.

Go to the Options tab and check the box for "Vary colors by point" and click OK.

If you don't care for the bar colors then you'll have to click on a single bar and change it manually. If you're going to end up doing this with a lot of them then you might as well go with the manual method from the beginning.

For Excel 2007 users when you choose Format Data Series your dialog box has a picture of the chart, and several tabs. Go to the Options tab, and check the box for "Vary colors by point" and then click Close.

While you could choose to click on a single bar and manually change the color I'd like to recommend that you simply change the color scheme (Page Layout tab on the Ribbon, Colors button). Using this method of color choices will ensure that the bars are color coordinated while still being different.

Anyway, regardless of your Excel version, multi-colored bars for a single data series really don't have to be that difficult to create… and it's so nice to have bars of a different color.