Excel Newbie Trying to Show Expenses as a Percentage on a Bar Chart - AT WORK Please help

I work for a law firm and they've asked me to create a bar chart showing the firm expenses. However, since the numbers are confidential, they want them to show as percentages, not actual figures (the percentage would be where that items falls within the range of the lowest cost to the highest cost) . I have the figures and have entered them in the data. But can't get them to show as a percentage on the graph. I'm sure I'm missing a formula or something but don't know enough about this program. It was done before (by someone who is no longer here) and it looked like this:expenses2.jpg

Help???

Lisa

Hi Lisa,

Attached is a spreadsheet that emulates what you are trying to achieve. Hopefullf this will help you. If you tell me what version of excel you are using or upload an example spreadsheet I can help you further.

Regards,

James

YTD Percentages.xlsx

Hi Lisa,

welcome to the forum. The task you described shouldn't be hard. When you look back later it will appear as an easy one. :P

Basically first your need to set up the data in columns. Here's a way to do it:
Column A for expenses.
Column B for name of expenses (insurance, office cost, etc.)
Column C for percentage of expenses (for this you need a formula that will divide the current expense by the sum of all expenses)
Make sure that all columns have column headers in row 1.

After that you highlight column B and C and click 'add chart' or something like that. (Not sure how it is in Excel 2010.) Select bar chart or column chart (your picture has a column chart) and you're done. There can be adjustments to make it prettier, but these are the basics. (For example you might want to sort your data to be in ascending or descending order.) 've attached an example spreadsheet that you can look at. Happy charting!

Thank you so much! I'm going mad. What you've done is exactly what I want -- but that formula does not seem to be working in my spreadsheet I use Excel 2010. Let me try to upload what I have...

expcht.xlsx the spreadsheet I've started.

Yes! This worked. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I did realize this was probably very easy. But I just couldn't get there! Time for a class, I think I'm so grateful....