How to I change the colour (or hightlight) some of the bars in a bar chart in Keynote?

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Level 1

12 points

How to I change the colour (or hightlight) some of the bars in a bar chart in Keynote?

I am using Keynote 6.2.2. I have prepared a chart which displays the quarterly income (as a points on a line) and expenditure (as bars) for the past 3 years. I wish to highlight the Q1 expenditure bars for comparison reasons. At the moment all the bars are coloured red (and the income lines, blue). How can I either change the colours of just the Q1 expenditure bars for each year?

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.6)

Posted on Mar 5, 2015 12:35 AM

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Answer 1

Mar 5, 2015 1:50 AM in response to VilniusNic

Click on the chart, then click on the bar you want to change so that it is selected

Inspector > Format > Style > Fill: click on the colour circle and select a colour

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Answer 2

VilniusNic Author

Level 1

12 points

Mar 5, 2015 4:05 AM in response to Gary Scotland

Thanks, Gary. I have tried this, but I cannot change the colour of individual bars. When I click on the bar for 2012 Q1, the whole series is highlighted. Your method is the way it works in Excel, but it does not work for me in Keynote. I suppose I could just paste a picture of the Excel chart into keynote, but it wouldn't looks as good.

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Answer 3

Mar 5, 2015 5:18 AM in response to VilniusNic

You need to change to; plot columns:

select the chart

click the Edit Chart Data button

click the plot columns button (arrowed)

select the chart then select the individual bars to be changed:

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Answer 4

VilniusNic Author

Level 1

12 points

Mar 5, 2015 6:45 AM in response to Gary Scotland

Thanks for your help on this, Gary, but I'm still struggling. When I clicked on the plot columns button my chart when haywire from this

where the blue line is income and red columns, expenditure for each quarter, to this:

As you point out, I can re-colour one column in this view, but it is a meaningless view!

Thus I re-arranged the chart data by entering it into two columns in the columns view, but then cannot re-colour a single column.

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Answer 5

Mar 5, 2015 7:30 AM in response to VilniusNic

Iv created a graph to be similar to your example, using my previous method:

Try a testing a graph in a new blank presentation, perhaps there is something in your slide preventing the style changes?

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Answer 6

VilniusNic Author

Level 1

12 points

Mar 5, 2015 11:43 PM in response to Gary Scotland

Gary, your graph only has one line of data and, yes I can replicate this. My problem is having two different sets of data (income - the point joined by a line and expenditure - the columns) and only wanting to highlight the columns for Q1. I have cobbled together a work around by creating two separate charts: one for income (a line graph) and one for expenditure (a column chart) and ensuring they overlay exactly. Not exactly neat, but achieves the visual result:

For some reason I cannot take a screenshot to the data table - it disappears whenever I open 'Grab'!

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