Chart Colours

There are three main approaches to how you colour your chart.

1. Default (chromatic colours), assigned per value via system default.
2. Monochromatic colours.
   • This is best used only for a very small range of values (up to 4) where it is easy to distinguish between the shades of the same colour.
3. Assigned Chromatic colours based on either series settings or conditional formatting.
   • This is best used for values that you want to assign the same colour across different charts or reports, and/or to assign colours according to your organisation's brand management guidelines.

Note that different options may only be available with some chart types and you may have to take a different approach based on the type you are using.

Default

Most chart types will have a colour section where you can specify which field (usually already on the chart) is to be used to determine colour. To set it to default, follow the menu prompts from the colour field.

Monochromatic

To set the chart to a range of shades in the same colour, choose the Monochrome option in the above cascading menu:

To set the base colour for the monochrome chart, use the same menu to get to Settings.

This will take you to the Series menu option. Make sure you've selected the colour field before choosing the colour.

Assigned Colours - Chart Series

Most of the time you will be able to allocate a colour per series value, rather than use the system default. To do this, go to the Series option in the menu.

• If you do not have any series value populated to assign colours to, click + Populate Series.

• Once you have a series, click each option and assign a style and colour as required.

But what if you can't see these options, like if you are formatting a Pie Chart. You may have to use conditional formatting instead.

Assigned Colours - Conditional Formatting

For some chart types, like Pie Charts, you can only assign colours via conditional formatting. Go back to the Data screen and apply conditional formatting to the cell for each value that needs a specific colour on the chart. It can be as simple as assigning formatting to the cell for each value.  See 5. Formatting#5.Formatting-ConditionalFormatting for more details.

Once you have done this, you will see a new option against your colour field:

• This will now apply all of your conditional formatting colours to the same values in the chart. Note that
  • only values with a conditional format settings will appear in the legend
  • values without a conditional format will revert to system defaults which may duplicate a conditionally formatted value.