For example, Column charts illustrate how data changes over time, but they’re also the best design to show comparisons among items. Bar charts are, essentially, just horizontal Column charts and ...

Enter the “ Column Column Chart ” in Microsoft Excel, a clever visualization technique that combines category-level data with overall totals to tell a more complete story.

In the example, you would select cells "A1" through "E4." Click the "Insert" tab, then "Column" from the Charts group and "Cluster Column" from the drop-down menu.

Click the sheet tab in Excel for Mac 2011 that contains the chart you need to format. Double-click any bar in the column chart to open the Options panel. Reduce the value in the Gap Width field to ...