Learn how to add a legend to a chart, retrieve a missing legend, and adjust its settings. Add, edit, or remove a chart legend in Excel.

Click the chart to which you want to add a legend, click the Chart Elements button , and then click Legend. To change the location of the legend, click the arrow next to Legend and then click …

To add a new legend entry, type the reference to the worksheet cell or type a new name and then, in the Series values box, type a reference to the data series on the worksheet that you want to …

Change or create legend names for an Excel chart by editing the legend name cells or using the Select Data option.

You can hide or show the legend of a chart. You can also show a data table for a line chart, area chart, column chart, or bar chart.

Add data labels to a chart Click the data series or chart. To label one data point, after clicking the series, click that data point. In the upper right corner, next to the chart, click Add Chart …

Add a data series to a chart in Excel. Show a new data series in your chart (graph) by including the series and its name in the chart source data.

To make a chart easier to understand, you can add chart titles and axis titles, to any type of chart in Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, or Word.

This displays the Chart Tools, adding the Design, Layout, and Format tabs. On the Layout tab, in the Labels group, click Data Labels, and then click the option that you want.

For example, by adding a legend, data labels, and text boxes that point out what each ring of a doughnut chart represents, you can quickly understand the data that is plotted in the chart.