Customize the Items in the Legend of a chart

If your legend includes items that are too long, you can truncate long legend items at a specific number of characters.

For example, if you want an ellipsis to appear at the end of each truncated legend item, type ... in the Truncation text box.

You can also show the values of the data items in your legend.

Procedure

  1. Select the legend.
  2. To truncate the legend
    1. In the Properties pane, under General, double-click the Text Truncation property.
    2. To specify the number of characters at which the legend items are truncated, click Manual and type the number of characters in the Maximum characters box.
    3. To shrink the font of the legend item text until all the text fits in the legend, select the Shrink font as needed check box.
    4. To specify some text to appear at the end of truncated legend items, in the Truncation text box, type the text that you want to appear at the end of truncated items.
  3. To show the values of legend items within the legend
    1. In the Properties pane, under General, set the Show Values property.

      First Value and Last Value refer to the first and last item in the child set under the legend data item. Minimum Value and Maximum Value refer to the lowest and highest value in the child set under the legend data item.

    2. If you want to change the separator between the legend item and value, type a new separator in the Legend Separator property.
  4. To customize the title of the legend
    1. Click the default legend title area in the work area.
    2. In the Properties pane, under General, set the Default Title property to No.
    3. Double-click the default legend title area in the work area and type the new title.