You can format a line chart to have no line and no markers, to avoid the background
colored line.

You can add a line series, hidden as above, using Y values to put the labels where
you want, then use a third party utility to assign labels to the points from another
worksheet range. Two such utilities that do this, both free and easy to install and
use, are:

Rob Bovey's Chart Labeler, http://appspro.com
John Walkenbach's Chart Tools, http://j-walk.com

- Jon
-------
Jon Peltier, Microsoft Excel MVP
Peltier Technical Services
Tutorials and Custom Solutions
http://PeltierTech.com/
_______

Brenda wrote:

> I have a bar graph showing payer mixes for our 3 business units, 6 bars for
> each unit, with the data labels above each bar showing the percent of total.
> Across the bottom of graph I would like to add the prior year percentages for
> comparison, but I don't want to include that data in the graph - just display
> the percentage.
>
> I tried adding a text box with the information, but I'm not able to
> consistently get it to line up with the current data. I also tried adding
> individual text boxes linked to my data, but this was not ideal because of
> the difficulty in lining them up as well. I also thought of adding the prior
> year data to the graph as a line graph and then changing the color to match
> the background so that it would not show, and then repositioning the data
> labels to where I want them... but some of the lines ran through the bars,
> showing a white line (that idea was in the middle of the night - worth a
> shot, anyway).
>
> Does anyone know how this might be done? Seems like it isn't too difficult
> of a request and there should be a way...
>
> Thanks!
> Brenda