This post describes how to rotate a chart in Excel 2016-2010. You'll learn different ways to spin bar, column, pie and line charts including their 3-D variations. Besides, you'll see how to reverse the plotting order of values, categories, series and legend. Those who often print graphs and charts will read how to adjust the sheet orientation for printing.
Excel makes it really easy to represent your table as a chart or graph. You just select your data and click on the icon of the suitable chart type. However, the default settings may not work for you. If your task is to rotate a chart in Excel to arrange the pie slices, bars, columns or lines in a different way, this article is for you.
If you often deal with relative sizes and illustrate proportions of the whole, you are likely to use pie charts. In my picture below, data labels overlap the title, which makes it look unpresentable. I am going to copy it to my PowerPoint Presentation about peoples' eating habits and want the chart to look well-ordered. To fix the issue and emphasize the most important fact, you need to know how to rotate pie chart in Excel clockwise.
After being rotated my pie chart in Excel looks neat and well-arranged.
Thus, you can see that it's quite easy to rotate an Excel chart to any angle till it looks the way you need. It's helpful for fine-tuning the layout of the labels or making the most important slices stand out.
I think 3-D charts look awesome. When other people see your 3-D chart, they may believe you know it all about Excel visualization techniques. If a graph created with the default settings doesn't look the way you need, you can adjust it by rotating it and changing the perspective.
I changed the numbers to 40 and 35 correspondingly to make my chart look slightly deeper.
This pane also lets you adjust Depth and Height, as well as Perspective. Just play with the options to see which suite best for your type of chart. Feel free to use the same steps for pie charts as well.
If the chart you need to rotate in Excel displays Horizontal and Vertical axes, you can quickly reverse the order of the categories or values plotted along those axes. Additionally, in 3-D charts that have a depth axis, you can flip the plotting order of data series so that large 3-D columns do not block smaller ones. You can also reposition the Legend on your pie or column chart in Excel.
You can rotate your chart based on the Horizontal (Category) Axis.
Follow the simple steps bellow to get the values from the Vertical axis rotated.
If you have a column or line chart with the third axis, which shows some columns (lines) in front of others, you can change the plotting order of data series so that large 3-D data markers do not overlap smaller ones. You can also use the below steps to create two or more charts for showing all values from the legend.
In my Excel pie chart below, the legend is located at the bottom. I want to get the legend values on the right to make them more eye-catching.
Now I like my chart more.
If you need to just print your chart, it may be enough to modify the worksheet layout without rotating the chart in Excel. On my screenshot below, you can see that the chart doesn't fit correctly. By default, worksheets are printed in a portrait orientation (taller than wide). I'm going to change the layout to a landscape mode for my picture to look correct on the printable.
Now when I go to the Print Preview window I can see that my chart fits perfectly.
You can rotate your chart to any angle using the Camera tool in Excel. It allows you to place the result next to your original chart or insert the picture to a new sheet.
You can add the Camera tool if you go to the Quick Access tool bar and click on the small drop down arrow. Select the option More Commands…
Add Camera by choosing it from the list of all commands and clicking Add.
Now follow the steps below to make the Camera option work for you.
Creating a chart is a really good way to showcase your data. Charts in Excel are easy-to-use, comprehensive, visual and can be adjusted to look the way you need. Now you know how to rotate your column, bar, pie or line chart.
Having written all the above I feel like a real chart rotation guru. Hope my article will help you with your task as well. Be happy and excel in Excel!
18 responses to "How to rotate charts in Excel - rotate bar, column, pie and line charts"
Great excel comments.
How do I get a line chart to show one of the data series to be relative to a y-axis on the right hand side of the chart?
Hello Ken,
Please set the Vertical Axis Label Position to High as in the following sample:
https://support.ablebits.com/blog_samples/rotate-chart-graph-excel_1_label_position.xlsx
how do i ask youto get the worksheet setup
:)
Hello,
I will like to know how I can create one of those bars where I add all the counties or cities and it's spinning.
Thank you.
Ionela
Hello Ionela,
I'd recommend to create a PivotTable first. Then create a chart based on this PivotTable. Please see the following example.
https://support.ablebits.com/blog_samples/rotate-chart-graph-excel_3.xlsx
Hello,
with a line chart I'm as far as decribed in step 5 of the rotating chapter. I even got the %-axis as secondary axis on the right hand side, so it'll be on the bottom after the rotation.
But what about a legend? By any chance, how can that thing be rotated as well?
Thanks a lot
Michael
Hello Michael,
The legend rotates together with the chart. Please see the following example.
https://support.ablebits.com/blog_samples/rotate-chart-graph-excel_4.xlsx
Please let me know if you mean something else.
I'm trying to rotate a radar chart that has only four data points. Trying to depict the data points in a quad chart style (four quadrants), so using radar chart which is great but the data is offset to the right by 45 degrees. Is there a way to make the data visible in an X Y axis style (x and y axis ranges are 50 to 50? I can copy the chart and paste into Power Point or Word and rotate that picture, but want to view the rotation directly from the spreadsheet.
Hello Mel,
As far as I understand, you need a four-quadrant chart. Please see the following example that demonstrates an X Y (Scatter) chart.
https://support.ablebits.com/blog_samples/rotate-chart-graph-excel_5_excel_four_quadrant_chart.xlsx
The method of the camera makes weird things when you drag the picture (as it were a mirror). It is way easier to use powerpoint, paste there the chart as picture, rotate it and then use it wherever needed. The quality is also slightly higher than with the camera.
Thank you for the input, Dani!
thanks a lot! that's it...
Good luck.
Can I just use the rotate tool without using the camera tool?
Hi there,
Dani's last comment solved the whole problem with a high resolution rotated chart. I was going to copy the chart, paste it as a picture (paste special) in powerpoint then rotate it using the rotate control, but then I decided to try it directly on word .. and it worked. I also tried in excel and it worked perfectly without any loss of picture quality.
Hi,
I'm trying to rotate a stock chart in PowerPoint (so the data lines run horizontally). Once rotated the chart still needs to be 'editable'
Hi,
I want to rotate a circle or parabola from one position to another. How can I do?
the problem is to translate and rotate the circle or parabola so that they touch each other.
Great information
Can you rotate legends?