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How to reverse order of items in an Excel chart legend?

For example you have a sales table and created a stacked bar chart based on it as below screenshot shown. As you see, the chart shows the January sales first, then the February sales, and at last the March sales. But now you need to reverse the order of months, how could you solve it? This article will introduce the solution about reversing the order of legend items in a stacked bar chart in Excel.

Reverse order of items in an Excel chart legend

 


Reverse order of items in an Excel chart legend

To reverse the order of legend items in a stacked bar chart in Excel, please do as follows:

1. Right click the chart, and click Select Data in the right-clicking menu. See screenshot:

2. In the Select Data Source dialog box, please go to the Legend Entries (Series) section, select the first legend (Jan in my case), and click the Move Down button  to move it to the bottom.

3. Repeat the above step to move the originally second legend to the second last, and the original third one will be moved to the first automatically, and then click the OK button. See screenshot:

Now you will see the orders of legend items are reversed. See screenshot:


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This comment was minimized by the moderator on the site
When I create area charts, the order of the legend is the opposite of the order of the series stack. This is the opposite of what most site say the order should be. After spending an hour on the phone with Microsoft support, I discovered that the only way to get this right is to select "Top Right" location for the legend, then move it to where you want. "Left Side" and "Right Side" or "Top" and "Bottom" end up putting the legend in the opposite order, even if you move the legend around after selecting them.
This comment was minimized by the moderator on the site
That was the only and perfect solution, thanks!
This comment was minimized by the moderator on the site
I have the same question as Dennis. I have a combo chart with a secondary y axis; the first y axis series is a line chart and the secondary y axis series is a bar chart. I have those series in the right order. Yet Excel forces the secondary series to come first in the legend; moving around the order of the series in "Select Data" does nothing. VERY FRUSTRATING.
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That isnt really reversing the order of items in the legend - it is reversing the items on the chart - which then reverses the legend. What if the chart is right but the legend is wrong ?
This comment was minimized by the moderator on the site
After fiddling with the legend to make it look right, perhaps flip the axis values in reverse order? That could be done via the Ribbon or by: Right click an axis to bring up the Axis Properties window (sorry, my Office version is not English...) > Select an option to show the values of the axis in reversed order.
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