Displaying data labels only from separate column

**brendenguy** · 02-28-2010, 04:57 PM

I hope this has not already been asked, but I have been searching for the last several hours and I have not yet found a solution.

I have an chart in Excel that is displaying data according to a selected column from the worksheet. On a separate column, I have data labels only on certain cells in the column (the rest of the column being blank). The two columns line up with each other such that the data labels should appear at the same point as the data on the other column. I am having a very hard time figuring out how to display these data labels on the chart. Any help you can provide will be greatly appreciated.

Example:

Column A
A1 1
A2 2
A3 3
A4 4
A5 5

Column B
B1
B2 Label
B3
B4 Label
B5

**teylyn** · 02-28-2010, 05:13 PM

Hello brendenguy,

welcome to the forum. You may want to download and install the free Chart Labeler Add-in
available from here http://www.appspro.com/Utilities/ChartLabeler.htm

It's an invaluable tool when working with Charts. You can assign any cell range to be data labels with just a few clicks.

**brendenguy** · 02-28-2010, 05:43 PM

Thanks for the quick reply teylyn. Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but I don't think the XY Chart Labeler will work for what I am trying to do. I need to automatically update data labels on my chart through VBA. The data labels are all coming from a separate column than the series is being graphed from. Is there any way you know of to do this? It didn't seem like the XY Chart Labeler could be used in this way.

**teylyn** · 02-28-2010, 05:53 PM

Don't be mislead by the XY in the name. The Chart Labeler can put labels onto all kinds of charts. Start the command, select the series, select the range with the labels. Done.

Can you post a sample workbook?

**brendenguy** · 03-06-2010, 05:21 PM

I got this to work with the XY Chart Labeler you mentioned. Unfortunately it is taking around 5 minutes or more to add the data labels to the chart. Considering the number of different sheets I have to do this on, this just takes too much time. Am I doing something wrong?

Please Login or Register  to view this content.

The series and source range for the labels are both 458 rows long. It seems like this should be something very easy to do in Excel. I don't understand why Microsoft would not support something like this...

If anyone knows another (faster) way to do this, I would very much appreciate it.

**peterpost** · 07-22-2010, 12:18 PM

You could try open office. Despite being more clunky than MS Excel in many respects, it does have support for this sort of thing - I tried it and it works for x-y labelling at least.

**teylyn** · 07-22-2010, 06:33 PM

Changing to a different software may not be an option for many Excel users, whose software is not their own choice but set by company policy.

The XY Chart Labeler is a fantastic tool, free, quick to install, easy to use and very powerful. A must have for anyone who does serious charting.