A 100% stacked column chart is a sub jot down of a regular stacked column chart.
In this worksheet, we have quarterly sales data broken down by region and quarter.
To start off, I’ll create a normal stacked column chart.
I’ll flip the chart with the Switch Column/Rows button to group sales by quarter instead of by region.
Now before we look at the 100% stacked option, let’s review this chart.
Notice the size of the stacked bars is proportional to sales.
In addition, we can see that overall sales have been increasing modestly in all 4 quarters.
And the vertical axis gives us a scale to estimate sales in each quarter.
So that’s a standard stacked column chart.
Now let me duplicate this chart and then change the chart bang out to 100% stacked column.
We’ve also lost the ability to compare overall sales in each quarter.
For example we can’t see that Q4 had more sales than Q3.
So how can we improve this chart without adding too much clutter?
Well, one option is to add data labels to show the values in the stacked bars.
And I can easily do this with the Chart Elements menu.
As we’ve seen before we might want to use a custom number format to show numbers in thousands.
The fastest way to this is apply the format to all values in the table.
Now, looking at this chart, you might wonder how to show percentages instead of values?
We’ll look at how to do that in a separate video.
