VALUE LABELS Calculate automatically PERCENTAGES

lolita23 wrote:
Hello,

I would like to insert data labels to my bars graphic. Precisely, I have filled a table with NUMBERS, but on the graphic I would like to see these value labels in percentage (with no need to calculate them in another table). This option is available in excel, but I can't find it here.

I hope you can help me because I'm going crazy...

Maybe the Chart Inspector may be your friend.

Click the Series button
Then check the box 'Value Labels' and at last, navigate in the Format menu.

Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France) dimanche 6 juin 2010 20:48:25

I assume this is a stacked bar chart and you wish to show the percentage of each piece of the bar, not the value used to create the bar. That is not something Numbers can do automatically for you; there is no value label setting you can choose to create this. If you plot the percentages, you can get the percentages as the value labels but you cannot plot the straight values and have percentage labels.

Excel doesn't do this either-- it's very frustrating and a missing feature that would be very easy for Apple (or M'soft) to implement I think.

OTOH, if the number in the table is, say 17, and that represents "17%", it's easy, but not immediately apparent.

Click the Series button in the Chart Inspector.
Check the Value Labels box. Click the button for your choice of where to position this label.
Use the Format popup menu to choose the appropriate format.

Setting the format to "Percent" will read the value in the cell (17) as a fraction of 1, and show 1700%. To get Percentage to show 17%, the value in the cell must be the equivalent fraction, 0.17.

But a Custom format can be set up to display 17 as 17%.

Choose Custom from the format list. Click on the Integer element provided (#,###), and, assuming you will not require values greater that 100 (percent), press the down arrow once to change the element to (###).

Click the Entered text button, then type "%" (without the quotes) to place a percent sign after the Integer element.

Done.

Regards,
Barry

PS @ drcoop:

Excel doesn't do this either-- it's very frustrating and a missing feature that would be very easy for Apple (or M'soft) to implement I think.

If you would find it useful, the route to make that known to Apple and the Numbers developers is via the Provide Numbers Feedback menu item in the Application menu (in Numbers, the "Numbers" menu). Considering its absence from both Numbers and the more feature loaded/feature bloated (depending on your viewpoint) MS Excel, I suspect implementation is not quite as 'very easy' as you think.

B

Badunit wrote:
I assume this is a stacked bar chart and you wish to show the percentage of each piece of the bar, not the value used to create the bar. That is not something Numbers can do automatically for you; there is no value label setting you can choose to create this. If you plot the percentages, you can get the percentages as the value labels but you cannot plot the straight values and have percentage labels.

This just in...

Checked this in NeoOffice tonight.

Neo will label the sections of a stacked bar with that section's value as percent of the total height of the bar.



Quick 'n' dirty chart, with no adjustments from the default values, including the 8 point Arial type used in the labels.

Probably similar in OpenOffice.org.

Regards,
Barry