It’s time to ditch the legend. You know – the legend, the key, the thing to the right of the graph that tells the reader what each piece of your graph means. We don’t need it. Legends are actually hard for many people to work with because they put a burden on the reader to seek and match up each line with its legend entry. It’s better if we just label the lines directly.

So (and this is the super fun part) click on the legend and delete it. Just hit your delete key. Smile. It feels good.

DirectlyLabelA

Oh but did you notice how your graph resized when you deleted the legend? We need room there for our labels so click inside the middle of the graph, in the white area (called the Plot Area) so that it is activated. You’ll see square handles at the corners and along the sides. Drag the side handle to the left to make room.

DirectlyLabelB

Now we have a space to add the labels. There are two ways to do this.

Way #1

Click on one line and you’ll see how every data point shows up. If we add a label to every data points, our readers are going to mount a recall election. So carefully click again on just the last point on the right.

Now right-click on that last point and select Add Data Label.

THIS IS WHEN YOU BE CAREFUL. If it says “Labels” as in plural it is going to add a label to every point on your line. You must not have selected the last point carefully enough. Try again and make sure it says “Label” singular.

If it pops in your value instead of the name of your series, right-click on it again and select Format Data Label (WATCH FOR THE PLURAL/SINGULAR BUSINESS HERE). In the dialogue box that opens, check Series and uncheck Value. Boom.

DirectlyLabelD

Way #2

Insert a text box at the end of the line and type the label name. You know how to insert a text box, right? Of course you do! You just probably never did so inside Excel. But it works! Insert>Textbox then draw the textbox in the graph and type away.

DirectlyLabelE

Did you forget the name of your line? Hover on it and Excel will tell you. The nice thing about the textboxes is that you can change the label to say whatever you want.

DirectlyLabelF

Both methods have definite pros and cons so it’s good to know how to do both. Whichever way you pick, your audience is going to be grateful that you’ve saved them from the mental gymnastics of a typical legend.

This process scores full points on the “Data are labeled directly” item on our Data Visualization Checklist


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