Home > Designing and creating solutions > Creating charts from data > Creating and editing charts in Layout mode > Column, bar, line, and area charts

Column, bar, line, and area charts

To get started creating a chart, see Creating quick charts or Creating and editing charts in Layout mode.

1.	Find the records you want to chart. See Making a find request.

If you are charting delimited data stored in a single record or data from related records, you must specify data source settings. See Specifying the data source for a chart.

2.	In the Chart Setup dialog box, choose a chart type. See About chart types.

3.	Enter the following settings:

 

For X-Axis (Horizontal)	Do this
Title	Type a title or click , choose Specify Field Name or Specify Calculation, complete the dialog box, and click OK.
Data	Click to specify a data series for the x-axis. This is the data you are comparing (for example, company name).

4.	If you’re creating a quick chart and it contains summary data, you can click the Summary menu in the Chart inspector and select a different summary type. See Summary types for charts.

5.	Enter the following settings:

 

For Y-Axis (Vertical)	Do this
Title	Type a title or click , choose Specify Field Name or Specify Calculation, complete the dialog box, and click OK.
Data	Click to specify a data series for the y-axis.  • To specify an additional data series for the y-axis, click Add a Y Series, then repeat this step to complete the Series Name (title) and Data settings.  • To specify another y-axis series, click +.  • To remove a data series from the y-axis, select the series, then click –.  • To change the order of the y-axis data series, drag items in the list.  • You can enter up to 12 data series on the y-axis. Notes  • Bar and stacked bar charts: The y-axis is the data you are comparing.  • Stacked column chart: For an effective comparison, specify more than one y-series.  • Area chart: In a multi-series area chart, the layered order of the data series reflects the order in which y-series are defined in the Chart Setup dialog box. The first series in the list appears on top followed by the next series in the list.
Symbol (Line charts)	Choose a symbol to mark each data point in the chart, or choose None to hide symbols. Symbol color in the final chart is determined by the color scheme setting in the Styles area of the Chart inspector. See Changing the look of a chart.

6.	If you are charting multi-series data, select Show Legend to display a legend in the chart. To change labels in the legend, edit the Series Name and click outside the text box.

7.	To set axis options, see Formatting and scaling chart axes.

8.	To change the color scheme, legend appearance, or font style, click Style in the Chart inspector. See Changing the look of a chart.

9.	Click Print or Save as Layout (quick charts) or Done (Layout mode charts) to finish the chart. See Creating quick charts or Creating and editing charts in Layout mode.