How to create a stacked column next to a single column using a dummy column

Let me clarify, as this is a very similar topic to many others on this excellent forum and I am a new member here :grin:

Many years ago I created an excel workbook to manage my accounts. I then created a column chart that showed three things: essential outgoings, non essential outgoings and total income. Nothing new here but bear with me…

The Essential and non-essential outgoings I stacked into a single column, each one overlaying the other with a different colour showing each value separately, the income column was right next to it in the same monthly space. So in effect I had two columns showing directly next to each other for any particular month, the leftmost column being double-stacked.

Now while there are many excellent posts showing how to achieve a similar chart using Libre Office, I have managed to manually re-create, as near as I can, the chart that I created all those years ago, and I haven’t used any graphical or visual effects.

I created a blank normal column chart, not using any cells to populate it, then I manually added a dummy column as a primary axis pointing to a simple couple of rows that contained month labels and zero-value entries. This is they key to getting this to work properly as it spaces the income column to the right of the stacked column. The zero values prevent it from appearing on the chart.

I then manually added an income column as a primary axis, then two columns for essential and non-essential outgoings as secondary axis’. I then played with spacing and overlap values until they overlaid the way I wanted them to with the income column sat perfectly to the right of them.

My problem is that as soon as I converted the outgoing columns into secondary axis, the value scale went waaay off, however hovering over the bars shows the correct values. This is where I am stuck :thinking:

For clarification I have posted a test sheet with my work to date for you to play with. If there is anybody on these forums with far more knowledge than I have who can shed some light on what I am doing wrong here (and I am sure the fault is mine :wink:) I would be eternally grateful for any advice that you can offer. I am so close to achieving this.

I apologize if this has already been covered, I have read many entries dealing with stacked column charts but none of them appear to replicate the chart that I had created all those years ago. This is the closest I have come to achieving this and maybe this method is new to some of you… maybe not.

Any help at this stage would be most welcome and I thank you in advance for any advice that you can put my way.

:edit:
I have included a working example from a very old test sheet that works in Libre Office, I just can’t re-create it from scratch… :thinking:

column chart experimental innacurate.ods (26.1 KB)

_Stacked cluster chart example.xls (16.5 KB)

actually TL;DR — Wikipédia

maybe try to ask something more specific, refering precisely to cell ranges …

In the sample file, I see them one behind the other.

For what do you do that? You need the same scale for outgoing and income.

Oh, I just understood when deleted the secondary Y axis. You must set the Maximum of the secondary Y axis to the same value of the primary Y axis:
imagen
And be sure that the minimum remains at 0.
column chart experimental acurate LeroyG.ods (22.7 KB)


I’m don’t know if you fiddled with the Essential values so the comparison between outgoings and income is real: i.e., in January it appears that the outgoings are half the income (which is not real if Essential sums £600,00), because there are only £400,00 visible of Essential over the Non Essential.


EDIT:
Sample done with stacked bars:
column chart experimental acurate LeroyG_2.ods (17.4 KB)

Thanks for the reply and for the sample spreadsheet attachment. I apologize for missing the scale option, I now understand what I did wrong there.

As for the values, I now realise the difference between Excel and Libre Office. In the sample xls file that I attached, this method actually stacks the totals together to reach the correct values. In the odf file, both values are taken from the base of the chart and not combined into one stack.

The only way I can get Libre to stack these values is to generate a stacked column chart from the start, but when I do that I cannot put a single bar directly next to it showing the income. It just wants to stack the income on top of the other two bars as one column :frowning: … which is why I created a single chart and then tried to “trick” it into stacking like I did in the original Excel sheet.

I am coming to the conclusion that this is not possible to do in Libre due to the way that it interprets data in relation to the column chart.

I do appreciate your reply though, at least I have learned how to use the scale value properly which I thank you for :sunglasses: