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How to: Change the Text of a Legend Item

When a field is placed in the data field drop-zone of the chart, a legend item is automatically generated that contains the name of this field. Every legend item is connected to an individual series on the chart, with the exception of Shape charts, where the legend is connected to individual data points instead of individual series.

On Shape charts, you can change the text of a legend item to show more information about the individual data points. For example, if you want to show the values of the data points as percentages in the legend, you can use a keyword such as #PERCENT. You can append .NET Framework format codes in conjunction with keywords to apply numeric and date formats. For more information about keywords, see Formatting Data Points on a Chart.

On non-Shape charts, you can change the text of a legend item. For example, if your series name is "Series1", you may want to change the text to something more descriptive like "Sales for 2008".

To modify the text that appears in the legend on a Shape chart

  1. Right-click on a series, or right-click on a field in the data field drop zone, and select Series Properties.

  2. Click Legend and in the Custom legend text box, type a keyword.

The following table provides examples of chart-specific keywords to use for the Custom Legend Text property. For more information about keywords, see Formatting Data Points on a Chart.

Keyword

Description

Example of what appears as text in the legend

#PERCENT {P1}

Displays the percentage of the total value to one decimal place.

85.0%

#VALY

Displays the actual numeric value of the data field.

17000

#VALY {C2}

Displays the actual numeric value of the data field as a currency to two decimal places.

$17000.00

#AXISLABEL (#PERCENT {P0})

Displays the text representation of the category field, followed by the percentage that each category displays on the chart.

Michael Blythe (85%)

Note

The #AXISLABEL keyword can only be evaluated at run time when there is not a field specified in the series field drop-zone.

To modify the text that appears in the legend on a non-Shape chart

  1. Right-click on a series, or right-click on a field in the data field drop-zone, and select Series Properties.

  2. Click Legend and in the Custom legend text box, type a legend label. The series is updated with your text.