PowerPoint Tutorials - Format Series Legend

Charts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 Flow Charts Tables

To move a Series Legend (or Format it), click on the Legend to select it:

Click the Legend to select it

Once the Legend is selected, right click to see the following menu:

Select Format Legend from the menu

Click on Format Legend, and you'll see a new dialogue box appear:

The Format Legend dialogue box

Click on the Placement Tab, and select Left for the Placement. Then click OK. Your Series Legend will move to the left:

Left placement

By moving it to the left, however, the text on the Category X Axis has went back to a double line, instead of just one single line. To cure this, you can resize the chart area.

Resize a Chart

Resizing the Chart itself is quite easy. The hard part is selecting it in the first place! To see what you need to select, have a look at this image:

Select the Plot Area

There's now two areas with shaded lines around them, an outer area and an inner. The one you're trying to get on your chart is the inner one (called the Plot Area). To select this, click on the any of the numbers running from top to bottom, the 3 say. When you've clicked on a number, click just to the left of it, in a white area. Don't click too far to the left, otherwise the Plot Area won't be selected.

When your chart looks like ours above, move your mouse over the black square second to the right. The pointer will change shape:

The Resize pointer

When your mouse pointer changes to the shape of a double-headed arrow, hold your left mouse button down. Keep it held down and drag to the right:

Drag to Resize

Let go of the left mouse button when the text on the Category X Axis is all on one line. Your chart will be resized:

The Resized Chart

To see what it all looks like, click anywhere outside of the chart (on the Title at the top, for example).

If you need to move your chart, click on it once. You'll see white squares or circles around the whole Chart Object. Drag your chart to a new position. Or you can nudge it in to place by holding down the Shift key on your keyboard, and then using the arrow keys.

When you're done, your completed Slide Two should look something like ours:

What your completed Chart should look like

And that's it for 3D bar charts! In the next tutorial, you'll learn how to insert a Pie Chart onto a PowerPoint slide.