Display zero on bar chart

Hello,

I am trying to set up a simple 3d bar chart for a student doing a traffic survey. His data is something like: car = 10, bike = 3, lorry = 0, motorbike = 2. The chart is easy to create but we want to display the zero for lorry. At the moment it just leaves a blank bar. I understand why it's blank but is there any way to specify that we want the base of the bar to show up. In Excel a bar chart which has a zero in it still has the base of the bar shaded, even though it doesn't rise up like the bars around it. I know this may only be an aesthetic wish but he wants it. Is this possible?

Thanks

Dan

Macbook Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.6)

Posted on Feb 6, 2011 8:58 AM

Reply
4 replies

Feb 6, 2011 9:37 AM in response to Daniel Thornburn

Daniel Thornburn wrote:
Hello,

I am trying to set up a simple 3d bar chart for a student doing a traffic survey. His data is something like: car = 10, bike = 3, lorry = 0, motorbike = 2. The chart is easy to create but we want to display the zero for lorry. At the moment it just leaves a blank bar. I understand why it's blank but is there any way to specify that we want the base of the bar to show up. In Excel a bar chart which has a zero in it still has the base of the bar shaded, even though it doesn't rise up like the bars around it. I know this may only be an aesthetic wish but he wants it. Is this possible?


If you want to display the zero value, you must insert a zero in the cell.

User uploaded file

A blank cell is not containing a zero, it contains nothing.
A cell containing a nil string is not containing a numerical value so it's no more displayed.

Yes, I know, the Numbers behavior is not consistent. When an AppleScript try to extract the value of an empty cell the app returns a zero.

But, I'm not a member of the Numbers team, just an end user like you.

Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France) dimanche 6 février 2011 18:35:34

Feb 6, 2011 9:48 AM in response to Daniel Thornburn

Daniel Thornburn wrote:
Is this possible?


Hi Dan,

Welcome to Apple Discussions and the Numbers forum.

Yes, it's possible.

User uploaded file

Should be clear from the illustration how, but since illustrations occasionally disappear...

Enter the zero value as a tiny positive value—I used 0.0001.\
Since the actual values are all integers, set the cell format for this cell (or for the whole column) to Number, with 0 decimal places.

Regards,
Barry

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Display zero on bar chart

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