Formatting chart legends

You can specify whether a chart displays a legend and, if so, its format. For example, you can apply a background color to the legend and change the font of the text.

To display the Format Legend dialog box:

  1. In Design Mode, double-click the chart. A hashed border is displayed.
  2. Double-click the border of the legend, or right-click and select Format Legend.
Note: To add a legend to a chart which has none, click the Legend tab of the Chart Options dialog box.

See Legend.

The Format Legend dialog box has three tabs:

  • Pattern
  • Font
  • Legend

The Pattern tab is described here:

The Pattern tab

Font tab

On the Font tab you can specify the font, font style, font size and font color of the legend text. You can also apply strike through and underlining.

Note: Do not use MS Wingdings fonts in any report which will be viewed on the Internet.

Legend tab

On the Legend tab, you can specify whether a legend is displayed and, if so, its position relative to the chart data.

To specify the position of the legend, select one of the legend types.

To remove the legend from a chart, click None.

You can also manually delete a legend or individual legend item:

  1. In Design Mode, double-click the chart. A hashed border is displayed.
  2. Select the legend or legend item and press Delete.

You cannot reinstate deleted legend items individually. But, if you delete and then reinstate the legend, it is displayed with all legend items.

You can reinstate a deleted legend on the Legend tab of the Chart Options dialog box.

See Legend .

Formatting a legend index

You can apply different formats to each item in a chart legend. For example, highlight an item with a different font or color.

To format a legend index:

  1. In Design Mode, double-click the chart. A hashed border is displayed.
  2. Double-click the legend item to format, or right-click it and select Format Legend Index.
  3. In the Format Legend Index dialog box, specify the formats to apply.

By default, only three legend items are displayed in Design Mode. If your chart has more than three items and you want to format each of them, recreate the chart with additional sample data. In the Data Source step of the Chart Wizard, specify the same number of series of sample data as there will be items in the legend.

See Creating charts.

If you will also format the Category index of chart (that is, for example, the X axis of a Column chart), specify at least the same number of categories of sample data as there will be actual categories.

See Scaling tab.

Parent topic: Formatting charts