# Microsoft Office Application Help - Excel Help forum > Excel Charting & Pivots >  >  Error Bars by Data Point instead of Series

## riwiseuse

I'm trying to put error bars on a bar graph of 3
 series. But the data points are percentages and each data point has a different error range depending on the sample size.  So far as I can tell, the error bar formatting tool only allows me to set the same error range for the entire series.

Is there a way to address each data point separately with regard to the error bars? Currently running 2004 on a Mac but I have just loaded 2008.  I've tried in both and can't seem to make any progress.

Thanks,

Brian

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## Andy Pope

Not sure about Mac but PC version has Custom Error range selectors.
Where you can give each point a unique value.

If this is not the case on Mac version the work around would be to calculate on the Custom points and draw them with additional data series.

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## riwiseuse

Andy,

thanks for your note. I tried setting the error bar to the series and then selecting data points separately, but the formatting options available for the separate data points does not include an ability to reset the error bar fro each data point.

can you give me a sense of how I might over lap data series to accomplish your second workaround.  I can see repeating the same series 4 times and maybe I could mess with the separation settings to get them to overlap and then select the data points/error bars that I don't want to show at other trial locations in my bar graph and give them a color of "none" and a line color of "none"

but that seems pretty cumbersome.

maybe I could make each trial a separate series and because of ascending time values it would still disperse them along the x-axis instead of on top of each other.  I don't know.  I'll try a few things, but any specfic hints would be great.

I'm also going to give this a try on an IBM, although the version I have on an IBM is older, I can't remember which one.  Does the IBM version allow you to separately select the error bars for a particular data point? That would seem to be the sensible approach, but on a Mac, even though I can select separate data points, selecting any one error bar selects them all.

Thanks again,

Brian

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## Andy Pope

Here is a post by JE McGimpsey that would suggest custom error bar values are available.





> First, make sure you've applied the SP1 update.
> 
> Next, right- or CTRL-click on the series to add the error bars, and
> choose Format Data Series...
> 
> Select Error Bars, then click on the Y Error Bars tab.
> 
> Click Custom, then Specify Value.
> 
> ...



If still stuck post workbook example.

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## Andy Pope

I just came across this information on mac error bars
http://www.microsoft.com/mac/help.ms...d-13a3b5a788ab

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## riwiseuse

Andy,

Thanks for that last link to microsoft discussion of error bars. To add custom error bars to each data point, you set up a series of values in the same relative orientation on the data sheet as the data and then when you bring up the format/data series command and check custom you can enter a cell range instead of a value and assuming that range has as many values as your series they will each pick up their custom error value (or, after leaving the cursor in the custom value field in the error bar submenu, you can go to the appropriate sheet and select the cell range).

So it is like your idea of creating another series but it is automatic.

Where you have the same plus and minus error values, you just choose the same set of cells to define both errors.

Don't know if a big time moderator like you can change my typo in the title so that other folks looking for error bar information will find it easily, but that might be a good idea if it were doable.

Thanks for your help in my case and thinking about it a few times.  I don't think that particular set of microsoft instructions is in the help file for excel. I don't know why not. 

Brian

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## sujith

Hi Brian,

Thanks for the post. I had a similar question as you had, and I some how landed up in this particular thread. I followed your last post, I figured out the answer for my concern.Thats great !

If anyone have similar concerns or questions and looking for some kind of help, I guess I can help them.


- Sujit

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