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Switch Rows and Columns in Charts [Quick Charting Tip]

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Let us say you have built a nice chart showing your sales and profits for the top 5 products (learn how to highlight top 5 products in a list), with products on X axis. Suddenly your boss wants to switch the rows to columns (or transpose the chart) so that she can see metric level grouping instead of product level grouping. No need to freak out and rush to Espresso machine, You can do it very easily with Excel Charting features.

In today’s quick tip you will learn how to swap chart rows and columns in excel,

In Excel 2007+, select the chart and go to “Design” tab. Here you will see a big-fat-“Switch rows and columns” button. Just click it and thump your chest. See this tutorial to understand.

Switch Rows and Columns in Excel Charts - MS Excel 2007

In Excel 2003, select the chart and in the chart toolbar, you see 2 little buttons, called as “by row” and “by column”. Click the one you want and off you go. See this tutorial to get it.

Switch Rows and Columns in Excel Charts - MS Excel 2003

Read more quick tips and/or charting tips, be awesome at work.

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19 Responses to “Switch Rows and Columns in Charts [Quick Charting Tip]”

  1. Susan says:

    Love your blog -- thanks for sharing so much Excel wisdom. it's been really helpful for me.

    Do you know if there an equivalently easy way to switch the columns and rows of *data* itself (that is, the info in the celles), not just the charts? If you could point me in the right direction on how to do that, you'd have my eternal gratitude.

  2. Chandoo says:

    @Susan.. Thanks for the compliments. you can transpose the data using paste special.

    Select the table you want to transpose, press CTRL+C, go to paste special and select transpose option. You can also use the keyboard shortcut - ALT+ESE

  3. Susan says:

    @Chandoo: You've just saved my sanity. Thank you!

  4. andrdk says:

    Chandoo, Nice writeup. I have been working with dynamic ranges for populating dynamic charts which works nicely for column charts (as no. of columns are fixed I can declare that many named ranges and assign them to series). But when it comes to row charts (each row is a series now), I am not able to find a way to define dynamic chart ranges. Is it possible to apply some sort of formula to make this "switch rows to columns" ? It would be great if it is achievable through formulas alone without any Macros and please share any info if you are aware of. (I referred here - http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/excel/HA011098011033.aspx for dynamic column charts).
    TIA.

  5. Mike Bromley says:

    The 'switch ro/column button, fat as it is, is greyed out. Why?

  6. Hui... says:

    @Mike
    Some chart types don't support this
    or
    You didn't choose a Horizontal range to start with (You don't have to with lots of the charts)

  7. Exasperated says:

    Yeah - like all the charts I make, the big Switch button is grayed out and totally useless. The real question is what charts DOES the big Switch rows/columns button work for? Can I even transpose the source data and re-select new data for the chart? Of course not - Excel doesn't allow me to select new data for the chart. I have to start over from scratch!!!

    Excel 2007 charts are so rigid and difficult - truly AWFUL!!! Just give me 2003 with better colors and graphics, thank you.

  8. Christopher says:

    Is there a way to switch rows/columns when building your chart off a pivot table?

    I am able to do it if I switch the row/column layout in my pivot table but I don't want that. I want my pivot displayed with "Client Name" as row and "Amount" as a column. But, in my chart I want the client name to be my horizontal axis and my Amount be my vertical.

    I hope this makes sense. Thanks.

  9. Adan Burlington says:

    I had this same problem in Power Point 07 with a greyed out switch row/column button. I noticed that the switch row/column button became enabled after clicking on the select data button.

    • Lisa says:

      Hi Adam,
      I just tried your suggestion with the 2010 Microsoft Office Excel program and had no results 🙁 is there any other advice you could suggest? Stuck on this test and need to get past it. Thanks Lisa

  10. Gin says:

    I felt your frustration but was not going to let Excel 2007 defeat me! I finally got it to work by selecting each series and editing the formula bar. Messy, but my chart is what I want.

  11. Puja says:

    You can also write small macro for the same. Please find below the one which i write to randomly put columnr cell values in to rows cells.

    Sub CopyRandomCells()

    Dim stOrig As Worksheet
    Dim stName As Worksheet
    Dim lnCont As Long
    Dim i As Integer
    Dim j As Integer
    i = 1
    j = 1

    Application.ScreenUpdating = False

    lnCont = 0
    idCont = 0

    Set stOrig = Sheets("SAT01") 'replace sheet1 with your sheet name
    lnCont = 3196

    For i = 2 To lnCont
    j = Int((lnCont - 2 + 1) * Rnd + 2)
    stOrig.Cells(j, 2).Copy Destination:=stOrig.Cells(i, 6)
    Next i
    Application.ScreenUpdating = True
    Set stOrig = Nothing

    End Sub

  12. Leah says:

    Hi!
    Is there a way to switch rows/columns of the sheet itself?
    to create a rotated table?
    This can really save me...
    thanks

  13. Len says:

    Having same problems as others with faded "Switch row/column" button in a chart with two line graphs plotted vs. time. Time is in the leftmost column so I don't know why it did not come out right the first time.

  14. Ali says:

    1 1743.43 2 1410.03 3 1178.23
    4 693.76 5 454.48 6 1033.43
    7 735.06 8 557.02 9 1300.01
    10 1445.28 11 867.07 12 828.99

    i need to convert them in to

    1 1743.43

    2 1410.03
    3 1178.23
    4 693.76
    5 454.48
    6 1033.43
    7 735.06
    8 557.02
    9 1300.01
    10 1445.28
    11 867.07
    12 828.99
    And i have 5000 of these. can any1 help?

  15. Chandoo says:

    @Ali..

    Welcome to chandoo.org and thanks for your comments.

    Assuming your data is in range A1:D1667 (with column A has numbers 1,4,7,10...)

    and you want the re-arranged data in F1:G5000,

    In F1 write =ROW() and drag it to fill till F5000
    In G1 write =INDEX($B$1:$D$1667, INT(F1/3)+1,MOD(F1,3)+1)
    and fill it until G5000

    This should work.

  16. Hui... says:

    @Ali
    I am sure I could come up with a fancy formula
    However the quickest way is to:
    .
    I assume the data is in Column A
    Select Column A
    Data Ribbon, Text to Columns
    Delimited, Next
    Tick Space, Finish
    .
    You will now have 6 columns of Data
    Copy Data in Columns C & D and paste at th Bottom of the Bottom of the data in Column A
    Copy Data in Columns E & F and paste at th Bottom of the Bottom of the data in Column A
    Now Sort Column A and B by Column A
    .
    Voila

  17. shekhar says:

    Thanks Chandoo!

  18. Kas says:

    Where is the like button?

    Thx a lot for the tip!
    K

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