Excel Chart Hack: Put data series labels in the bars of a bar chart instead of the legend

In a previous video (https://youtu.be/jqA5BUbgAFM) I showed how to replace the legend in a column chart with labels added using a scatter chart. Someone asked if this could also be done for a bar chart. This video shows you how. It is a slightly different approach because the scatter plot has to be placed on top of the bar chart. Like before, this method doesn’t replace any data labels for the bar values and gives you the flexibility of which set of bars the names appear in.

By Dave Paradi

Dave Paradi has over twenty-two years of experience delivering customized training workshops to help business professionals improve their presentations. He has written ten books and over 600 articles on the topic of effective presentations and his ideas have appeared in publications around the world. His focus is on helping corporate professionals visually communicate the messages in their data so they don't overwhelm and confuse executives. Dave is one of fewer than ten people in North America recognized by Microsoft with the Most Valuable Professional Award for his contributions to the Excel, PowerPoint, and Teams communities. His articles and videos on virtual presenting have been viewed over 4.8 million times and liked over 17,000 times on YouTube.