Let’s put the formulas aside for a moment and learn a cool chart tip in Google Sheets. Have you ever wondered how to create a column chart with red colors for negative bars in Google Sheets?
In Google Sheets, you may not see an option to have separate colors for negative and positive values in a column or bar chart. But don’t worry, it’s actually possible and quite simple to plot a column chart with red colors for negative bars in Google Sheets.
Workaround to Change the Negative Value Colors in Column Charts in Sheets
By formatting your chart data correctly, you can create a bar/column chart with red colors for negative bars in Google Sheets. Although in Excel you can use the “Format Data Series > Invert Color” feature to change the negative bar colors, I won’t go into detail about that since you can easily find those tips on the web.
Create a Column Chart with Different Colors for Negative Bars in Google Sheets
Similar to multi-category charts, you can tweak the data formatting for column charts in Google Sheets. In Excel, there’s no need to format the data differently, but in Google Sheets, you must format the data to create a bar/column chart with red colors for negative bars.
Column Chart in Google Sheets with the Same Colors for Negative and Positive Bars
Here’s the normal formatting for a column chart with the same color bars for negative and positive values. This is the default column chart. But we want to learn how to automatically change the color of negative bars to red.
To create a column chart with the same color for negative and positive values, follow these steps:
- Select the data A2:B13.
- Go to the Insert menu and click “Chart”.
- Google Sheets will analyze your data and may correctly plot the chart for you.
- If you don’t see a chart as shown above, follow the additional steps below the image.
How to Get Column Chart with Red Colors for Negative Bars in Google Sheets
In order to get different colors for positive and negative values in a column chart, format the data as follows:
That means you must move all the negative values into a different column. When you create a column chart with different colors for negative values, there are three columns involved: category column, positive value column, and negative value column.
- Select all three columns (A2:C13).
- Go to Insert > Chart.
- Change the chart type to column chart, if it’s not already selected.
- Under the Customize tab, go to Legend and change Position to None.
- Your chart with different colors for negative and positive bars is ready.
- If you want, you can customize the color of the negative bars as well as the positive bars by clicking the Series tab under Customize and changing the color.
And that’s it! You now know how to create a bar/column chart with red colors for negative bars in Google Sheets. If you want to explore more chart-related tips and tricks, be sure to visit Crawlan.com.
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