How to apply different color on different columns and legends easily?

[dstdst123]

Hi there

I am creating a Column chart, with x-axis showing years (e.g. 1990 to
1999), and y-axis showing GDP.

But i want to apply two different color on the columns (e.g. 1990 to
1995 use red colour columns, 1996 to 1999 use green colour columns)

Questions
1)
Is there an easy and automatic way to apply different color on the
columns? (Prefer not to click each bar or click each to format data
point)

(Am using Excel 2003 version)


2)
Can I add legend of my choice? How can i add 2 legends?

For example, I want to add a red legend for year 1990 to 1995, the
other green for year 1996 to 1999.


Thanks for your help.


cheers

 

[Andy Pope]

Hi,

The simplest way would be to use the technique for conditional charts.
Which is to use 2 series. One for the 1990-1995 data set and another for
the 1996-1999. Both sets should use the complete set of cells to cover
1990 through 1999. You can then colour each series as required and the
legend will contain the 2 entries.
One final formatting tweak is to set the Series overlap to 100% so the
columns are centered within each category.

Cheers
Andy