Displaying a Chart Legend

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated May 2, 2026)

Microsoft Graph is a simple graphing program provided with Word. It includes the ability to view your graph data in both spreadsheet and graph formats. If the data you are presenting in Microsoft Graph is complex, particularly if you have many data series (rows of data to chart), you may want to add a legend. Legends provide a "road map" for your chart so a reader can decipher what is included.

You can display a legend with your chart by following these steps:

Select Chart Options from the Chart menu. Microsoft Graph displays the Chart Options dialog box.
Make sure the Legend tab is selected. (See Figure 1.)

Figure 1. The Legend tab of the Chart Options dialog box

Make sure the Show Legend check box is selected.
Using the radio buttons in the Placement portion of the dialog box, indicate where the legend should appear in relation to the chart itself.
Click your mouse on OK.

If you later want to turn off display of the legend, you can repeat the above steps, but clear the Show Legend check box, instead (step 3).

Once the legend is displayed in your chart, you can use your mouse to position it. Simply point to the legend with the mouse, hold down the mouse button, and drag the legend to where you finally want it. When you release the mouse button, Microsoft Graph places the legend in the spot where you dragged it.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (721) applies to Microsoft Word 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003.

Author Bio

Allen Wyatt

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. Learn more about Allen...

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