The Visual Appearance of Graphs

You can format the visual appearance of graphs based on two settings:

The position of the graph elements (such as lines or bars in a line-bar graph or slices in a pie graph).
Conditions applied to columns.

Graph Formatting Based on Position

Positional formatting enables you to customize the appearance of a graph based on the position of graph elements; that is, the numeric sequence in which graph elements (for example, bars) are displayed in a group. A group is determined by the attribute columns that are displayed in the Group By drop target area. (For information on drop target areas, see "Drop Targets".

For example, suppose that you have a bar graph whose criteria include the Region, Dollars, and Units columns. Dollars are displayed first, then Units in the Measures drop target area. Region is displayed in the Group By drop target.

You can format the visual appearance of a graph based on position in terms of its color, line width, and line symbols.

Graph Formatting Based on Columns

Conditional formatting enables you to customize the appearance of a graph based on conditions applied to columns. The formatting is applied to the column values that meet the condition.

You can specify a color in which to display graph data based upon a specific column value, or range of column values that meet the condition specified for the column.

For example:

Conditionally changing the color of a graph based on specific column values.

A user wants to create a bar graph to compare sales between two beverages, Lemonade and Cola. When creating a bar graph the user specifies two conditions, one where the bar representing Lemonade sales is yellow, and another where the bar representing Cola sales is blue.
Conditionally changing the color of a graph based on a range of column values.

A sales manager wants to create a bar graph to compare sales for all reps across two sales bands.When creating a bar graph the sales manager specifies two conditions, one where the bar is red for all sales reps with sales less than $250,000, and another where the bar is green for all sales reps with sales greater than $250,000.

The way that you specify conditional formatting for graphs is different from that used for other views.