How to change axis labels order in a bar chart

Excel 365
Excel can display the data series in an inconvenient order for bar charts. For example, if you have a table with tasks for a Gantt chart, after creating a bar chart (see how to create a simple Gantt chart for more details), you expect to see tasks on the list arranged from top to bottom. Unexpectedly, Excel displays them in the reverse order:
Bar chart from lines in Excel 365

A similar inconvenient order Excel uses for the chart created from the table columns:

Bar chart from columns in Excel 365

See more about the competition chart.

To change the order of the labels on the axis, do the following:

   1.   Right-click the horizontal axis and click the Format Axis... in the popup menu (or double-click the axis):

Format Axis in popup menu Excel 365

   2.   On the Format Axis pane, on the Axis Options tab, in the Axis Options group:

  • Under Axis position, select the Categories in reverse order checkbox to display the labels in the reverse order,
  • Optionally, under Horizontal axis crosses, choose the At maximum category option to return the horizontal axis on the bottom of the plot area:
    Reverse order in Format Axis pane Excel 365

Excel rebuilds the chart to display the axis labels in the reverse order:

Example of bar chart from lines in Excel 365
Example of bar chart from columns in Excel 365

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Side by side comparison bar chart

Side by side comparison bar chart

To compare two sets of data, you can create various comparison charts, such as a butterfly chart, mirror chart, tornado chart, etc., or a double-sided chart. However, comparing the values in opposite directions is not always convenient. In order to display two datasets, you can use Excel to create a side-by-side bar chart, also known as a double bar chart.
Creating a Gantt chart

Creating a Gantt chart

A Gantt chart is a horizontal bar chart often used in project management applications like Microsoft Project. In the Gantt chart, the horizontal axis represents the total time span of the project, and each bar represents a project task: the left edge indicates the beginning moment of the activity, and the right edge indicates the estimated ending moment. The viewer can quickly see the duration of each task and identify overlapping tasks.
How to make Tornado chart in Excel

How to make Tornado chart in Excel

The tornado chart is a modified version of bar charts with two columns of data series whose bars are horizontal and pointing in opposite directions, with the base in the middle of the chart. In fact, the only difference between the tornado chart and the very similar charts - the butterfly chart and the mirror chart - is that the data series used to create the tornado chart must be sorted from the largest to the smallest.