Stacked bar charts are an excellent way to depict how categories "stack up" against each other. For example, assume you want to see the sales by quarter for each product. To do this, you could place the product type on the x axis and use a vertical stack to illustrate a breakdown of sales by quarter. In this example, the divisions within the Quarter category (Q1, Q2, Q3, and Q4) would be represented vertically, together reaching to the total sum for the year.
To stack label categories in a bar chart:
Select Vertical Stacked bar or Horizontal Stack bar from the Chart Type pull-down list.
Select the target category to subdivide in the vertical or horizontal stack.
Drag a value item from Elements to the z pane in the data layout.
Drag a label item from Elements to x pane in the data layout.
Drag the targeted item for the stacking from Elements to y pane in the data layout.
The chart creates stacks for each category of the targeted item. The height of all the stacks represents the grand total of all the charts.