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I though that would be simple... :-) If my data labels (series/value/name) are in column A in a table, chart works very well. But I don't seem to be able to easily specify that numbers should use a different column, say column B for Data Point Names (Wedge/Data/Name). I can do that individually for each column/wedge etc, but surely there must be a better way?
Numbers tables use values in Header rows and Header columns as labels in charts.
In your first example, column A is a Header column, and contains the dates to be used as labels.
In your second example, the Header column (A) is empty, and column B has not been designated a "Header" column, so there is no category text available to label the columns.
Select column B, then click the v at the right end of the the column reference tab and choose Convert to Header column. The labels should automatically appear.*
Regards,
Barry
*Note that You will not be able to convert column B to a Header column if Column A is not already a Header column. Numbers tables may have up to five Header columns, but these must be the first five columns of the table.
Numbers tables use values in Header rows and Header columns as labels in charts.
In your first example, column A is a Header column, and contains the dates to be used as labels.
In your second example, the Header column (A) is empty, and column B has not been designated a "Header" column, so there is no category text available to label the columns.
Select column B, then click the v at the right end of the the column reference tab and choose Convert to Header column. The labels should automatically appear.*
Regards,
Barry
*Note that You will not be able to convert column B to a Header column if Column A is not already a Header column. Numbers tables may have up to five Header columns, but these must be the first five columns of the table.
While it sometimes causes more problems than it is worth to go against what Numbers wants to do naturally, you can use cells other than headers for the category names on the X axis. If you select the chart and go to the Axis tab, it has a section that has the cells used for the x axis labels. Click in there, delete everything, then select a new range of cells from the table. It will expand the range into individual cell addresses, just like the addresses you just deleted. I don't know of any issues created from doing this, my initial comment was just a general rule of thumb.
This is true for bar charts, but doesn't seem to work for pie charts. With pie charts I can only get access to Data/Name for individual wedges. Redoing the table was simpler in my case (31 wedges :-))
As I said, "While it sometimes causes more problems than it is worth to go against what Numbers wants to do naturally, you can use cells other than headers for the category names". You can rename them all at once in a pie chart by starting with it as a 2-d column chart, changing the labels as described above, then converting it to a pie chart and changing it to "plot rows as series". As far as I can tell the new labels stick. But I don't think either method is worth the extra work. It is easier and less problematic to do what Numbers wants to do naturally.
Use selected column for data name in chart
