Your Excel workbook could have some charts and you might have noticed that legends are made by default for all the charts in the book. Excel legends are helpful to define the charts including the data in them.
You can simply edit the data to make changes in the legend entries given on the sheet when the charts appear with legends. Using the Select Data Source dialog box you can make as many changes as you want in the legend. You can change legend values as well so that does not affect the data in the sheet.
How to Add Legend to an Excel Chart
- Choose an area on the chart.
- Open the Layout tab and then click on the Legend option.
- Click on the place you have selected for the legend from the Legend drop-down menu.
- Choose Show Legend on the Right side.
- You will see the legend appears on the right side of the graph.
Add legend chart 2
- You can change the name of the legend by editing it or even you can change the position and format as well.
How to Edit Legend in Excel
Below you will find out two main approaches to changing the legend name:
- Alter series name in Select Data
- Alter legend name
Alter Series Name in Select Data
- Click Select Data while right-clicking on the chart anywhere.
- Choose the series Brand A and then click Edit.
- A dialog box of Edit Series will appear.
- You need to delete the present entry “=Sheet1!$C$2” from the series and add “A” in the text box.
- You will see an instant change in the legend name, which is “A”.
Change Legend Name
- At first, you have to define the cell in which the legend name is needed to add. You can see the column chart for Brand B links to cells D2:D7.
- As you know D2 has the legend name, choose D2 and add the new legend name “B Sales”.
- The legend name on the chart will be updated instantly from “Brand B” to “B Sales”.
How to Edit Legend Format
Let’s get to know how you can make changes in the legend format. For this, right-click on the legend and choose the Format Legend option.
A dialog box of Format Legend will appear. You can make changes in the legend position, border, color, fill, border styles, and even formatting options.
For instance, suppose you need to fill the legend box with Aqua, Accent 5, and Lighter 60%. Click on the Fill option and then check Solid Fill.
Click OK once the color is selected. You will see the fill color is changed into the color you have selected.
You can even make more changes in the formatting. Have a look at the following image in which you can see the orange border with a 5% pattern fill.
Closing Thoughts
Hopefully, this post helped you with what you were looking for. And you must be acknowledged enough to understand how to edit legend in Excel using two major options. You can make changes in the chart legends as per your choice to make them even more dynamic and attractive.
