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Column Chart Maker

Vertical bars, built from your spreadsheet. Upload a CSV or Excel file, pick a label column and a value column, and publish an interactive column chart you can embed anywhere for free.

免费创建 Column Chart查看图库

什么是 Column Chart？

A column chart compares values across categories by drawing one vertical bar per category, with height carrying the number. It is the same encoding as a bar chart: length against a common baseline, which is the most accurately read encoding there is, turned through ninety degrees. The rotation is not cosmetic. Vertical bars sit naturally on a horizontal axis that reads left to right, so a column chart is the better shape whenever the categories have an order the reader already expects to run that way: months, quarters, years, age bands, score ranges. Horizontal bars are the better shape when the category names are long or the list is deep. Everything else about the two charts is identical.

什么时候使用 Column Chart

  • Your categories have a left-to-right order

    Months, quarters, years, age brackets, survey scales. Readers already expect time and ordered bands to run along the bottom of a chart, and a column chart puts them there.

  • You have a handful of short labels

    Up to roughly a dozen categories whose names fit under a bar without tilting. Beyond that, or once the names get long, the horizontal bar chart stops fighting the labels and starts helping.

  • The comparison is the whole point

    Height against a shared baseline is read more accurately than angle, area or colour. If your reader has to say which of these is bigger and by how much, columns answer it faster than anything else.

  • You want it to sit beside a line chart

    Columns and lines share the same axis convention, so a column chart of monthly volume next to a line of monthly rate reads as one story rather than two unrelated pictures.

什么时候不该用 Column Chart

  • The category names are long

    Vertical bars give a label about as much width as the bar itself. "Business and administrative services" under a 40-pixel column becomes tilted, truncated or unreadable; use a bar chart and let the names run along the left.

  • You have more than about fifteen categories

    Columns get thin and the chart turns into a picket fence. A ranked horizontal bar chart scrolls comfortably to fifty rows; a column chart does not.

  • You are showing a continuous distribution

    Binned numeric data belongs in a histogram, where the bars touch because the axis underneath is a number line. The gaps in a column chart mean the categories are separate things.

  • You have many time points

    Two or three years of monthly columns is a wall. Once the shape of the trend matters more than each individual value, a line chart says it in far less ink.

如何制作 Column Chart

从电子表格到已发布的图表，一步一步来。

  1. 01Start from the column chart template
  2. 02Bring one label column and one value column
  3. 03Upload or connect your data
  4. 04Decide the order deliberately
  5. 05Format the numbers and label the axis
  6. 06Publish, embed or export
阅读完整的 Column Chart 指南

Column Chart 的组成部分

Column
One vertical bar per category. Its height is the value, measured from the baseline. That's why the baseline has to be zero.
Category axis
The horizontal axis, listing the separate things being compared. Gaps between the columns are meaningful: they say these categories are distinct, not points on a scale.
Value axis
The vertical scale. Label it with its unit, and start it at zero unless you have a very good reason and a very visible note.
Baseline
The zero line every column is measured from. Move it and the ratio between two columns stops matching the ratio between two numbers.
Gap width
The space between columns. Around half a column width is the usual balance; too wide and the comparison scatters, too narrow and it starts to look like a histogram.
Value label
The number printed on or above a column. Worth turning on for a small chart where readers want exact figures; worth turning off once there are enough columns for the labels to collide.

Column Chart 的常见错误

Truncating the value axis

Starting at 90 instead of 0 turns a three per cent difference into a doubling. Columns encode magnitude by height, so a cut baseline is not a zoom but a different number.

Tilting the category labels to 45 degrees

Diagonal text is slow to read and a sign the chart is the wrong way round. If the labels do not fit horizontally, switch to a bar chart rather than rotating them.

Leaving categories in spreadsheet order

Alphabetical or whatever-order-they-were-entered makes the reader do the ranking. Unless the sequence carries meaning, sort by value.

Using 3D or perspective columns

Depth adds a second, false encoding and makes the front row look taller than it is. It has never made a chart easier to read.

Colouring every column differently

Colour should mean something. A different hue per category tells the reader to look for a grouping that is not there; use one colour, and a second only to highlight.

Column Chart：常见问题

Orientation, and nothing else about the encoding. Column charts run vertically and suit ordered categories like months and short labels; bar charts run horizontally and suit long category names and longer lists. Both compare length against a shared baseline.

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