Legend Alignment and Layout
- 3 minutes to read
This document describes how the legend can be positioned within a chart’s area, and how the layout of legend items can be adjusted.
This document consists of the following sections.
Legend Positioning
The spacing between the legend’s edge and other chart elements (the diagram and chart titles) is determined by the Legend.Margins property.
The horizontal and vertical alignment of the legend within a chart is determined by the Legend.AlignmentHorizontal and Legend.AlignmentVertical properties. These properties allow you to place the legend inside or outside the diagram. The following images provide some examples of how these properties work.
AlignmentHorizontal = RightOutside AlignmentVertical = TopOutside | AlignmentHorizontal = Right AlignmentVertical = Top |
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You can control the size of the legend relative to the diagram’s size, via the Legend.MaxHorizontalPercentage and Legend.MaxVerticalPercentage properties. They determine the maximum size of the legend compared to an overall dimension of the chart (its width or height), as a percentage. So, for example, using these properties you can restrict the legend’s size to a half of the chart’s size, with no matter how many items there are in the legend. The following images demonstrate these properties in action.
| MaxHorizontalPercentage = 100 | MaxHorizontalPercentage = 60 |
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| MaxVerticalPercentage = 100 | MaxVerticalPercentage = 60 |
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Use care in specifying both these properties simultaneously, as too small a legend size may cause the legend items to not fit into the available dimensions, and be cut.
As shown in the images above, the legend’s items are broken into multiple columns, to fit its reduced size. This may cause the items to shift across each other due to their different lengths. In this case (when the Legend.Direction property is set to either LeftToRight or RightToLeft), you can use the Legend.EquallySpacedItems property, which makes the space between items equal, with no regard to the length of each item. This gives a more professional look to the chart. The following images demonstrate this property in action.
| EquallySpacedItems = false | EquallySpacedItems = true |
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Legend Items Layout
To define the direction in which the legend items are arranged, use the Legend.Direction property. The following images demonstrate its various settings.
| Direction = TopToBottom | Direction = LeftToRight |
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Note that the items are arranged in a single row only if this is possible according to the chart’s size (or, by the legend’s Legend.MaxVerticalPercentage and Legend.MaxHorizontalPercentage properties’ settings). Otherwise, the items are arranged into columns.
The spacing between the legend’s edge and its items is determined by the Legend.Padding property.
The spacing between the legend items is determined by the Legend.HorizontalIndent and Legend.VerticalIndent properties. The following image demonstrates them in action.
| HorizontalIndent | VerticalIndent |
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And, the spacing between a marker and its text is adjusted via the Legend.TextOffset property.
The visibility of markers and their text is determined by the Legend.MarkerVisible and Legend.TextVisible properties, respectively. When both these properties are disabled, the legend becomes invisible.