How to Increase Width of Bar Graph in Excel

You created a bar graph in Excel, but the thin, spindly bars are getting lost in a sea of whitespace. This common issue can make your data hard to read and less impactful. Fortunately, you can fix it in under a minute. This article will walk you through exactly how to increase the width of bars in your Excel graphs to make your data visualizations clear, professional, and easy to understand.

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Why Does Bar Width Even Matter?

Before we jump into the "how," let's quickly touch on the "why." Adjusting the width of your bars isn't just a matter of personal preference, it directly impacts how your audience interprets the data. Skinny bars can make a chart look sparse and unimportant, while properly sized bars look more substantial and professional.

• Improved Readability: Wider bars are simply easier for the human eye to process. They reduce the amount of empty space, guiding the viewer's focus to the data itself rather than the background.
• Better Aesthetics: A well-proportioned chart is more visually appealing. When bars have a balanced width relative to the space between them, the overall chart looks more polished and deliberate.
• Greater Impact: Think of it as visual weight. Thicker bars lend a sense of importance and stability to your data, helping your core message land with more authority during a presentation.

A good rule of thumb is that the space between your bars should be roughly half the width of a single bar. Excel's default settings often make this gap much larger, which is why manual adjustment is so often necessary.

The Easiest Way: Using the "Format Data Series" Pane

The most direct way to change bar width in Excel is by adjusting the "Gap Width" setting. This sounds a little counterintuitive - why adjust a "gap" to change a "bar"? But once you understand it, it makes perfect sense. Excel controls the width of the bars by controlling the amount of empty space between them. A smaller gap forces the bars to become wider to fill the space.

Here’s the step-by-step process:

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Step 1: Select Your Data Series

First, click on any one of the bars in your chart. When you do this, you’ll notice that all of the bars in that specific data series become selected. Little handles will appear at the corners of each bar in the series to confirm your selection.

Careful not to double-click, as that might select just a single bar instead of the entire series. If only one bar is selected, your changes will only apply to that bar.

Step 2: Open "Format Data Series"

With the data series selected, right-click on one of the bars. A context menu will pop up. From this menu, choose "Format Data Series..." at the bottom.

Alternatively, with the series selected, you can use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + 1 (or Cmd + 1 on a Mac) to open the same formatting pane.

Step 3: Adjust the Gap Width

The "Format Data Series" pane will appear on the right side of your screen. Make sure you are on the "Series Options" tab, which is represented by a small bar chart icon.

Here, you will see a slider and input box labeled "Gap Width." This setting controls the space between the categories on your axis.

• The default is often set to 150% or even 219%, meaning the gap between the bars is 1.5x or more the width of a single bar. This is what creates that skinny bar effect.
• To make the bars wider, you need to decrease the Gap Width percentage.

You can either drag the slider to the left or type a number directly into the box. Try setting it to something between 30% and 80%. As you change the number, you’ll see the bar widths update in real-time on your chart. Adjust it until you find a balance that looks good to you.

• Lower percentage = Smaller gap = Wider bars.
• Higher percentage = Wider gap = Skinnier bars.

Setting the Gap Width to 0% will make all the bars touch, which is what you'd typically want for a histogram, but usually not for a standard bar chart.

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Working with Clustered Bar Charts

If you're using a clustered bar chart (where multiple bars are grouped together for each category), you have another useful setting in the "Format Data Series" pane: "Series Overlap."

Understanding "Series Overlap"

This setting controls the space between bars within a single category group.

• 100%: The bars will be completely on top of each other.
• 0%: The bars will touch each other side-by-side.
• Negative percentage (e.g., -25%): This will create a small gap between the bars within the same cluster.

If you have a clustered bar chart, it’s often a good practice to set the Series Overlap to a small negative number (like -10%) and the Gap Width to a larger number (like 100%). This creates a clear visual distinction between bars in the same category cluster while also separating the clusters themselves. Play around with both settings to see what tells your data's story most effectively.

Pro Tips for Better Bar Charts

Changing the bar width is a great start, but here are a few other quick tips to elevate your Excel charts from basic to brilliant.

1. Sort Your Data

For nominal categories (like sales by country or traffic by marketing channel), there's often no inherent order. Before you even create your chart, sort your data table in ascending or descending order. Bar charts are much easier to read when the bars are arranged from largest to smallest (or vice versa). This simple step helps viewers quickly identify top performers and trends without having to hunt for them.

2. Use Color Intentionally

Don't rely on Excel's default color palette. Use colors that match your company's branding or that help tell your story. If you want to draw attention to a specific bar (like your company's performance versus competitors), make that bar a bold, contrasting color and use muted grays or blues for the rest.

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3. Declutter Your Axes and Gridlines

By default, Excel adds a lot of "chart junk" that can be distracting. Remove any elements that don't add value.

• Do you need vertical gridlines? Probably not. Select them and press Delete.
• Are the data labels on every bar necessary? If the general trend is what matters, you can often remove them for a cleaner look.
• Shorten axis labels. If your vertical axis is in dollars, you don't need "$10,000.00." You can format the axis label to show "$10K" or just "10" with a label that says "(in thousands)."

4. Save Your Design as a Template

If you find yourself constantly making the same formatting adjustments - wider bars, specific colors, no gridlines - you can save your masterpiece as a chart template. After perfecting your chart:

1. Right-click on the chart area.
2. Select "Save as Template..." at the bottom of the menu.
3. Give it a memorable name (e.g., "MyBrand_Bar_Chart").

The next time you make a chart, you can go to the "Insert Chart" dialog, click on the "Templates" tab, and select your saved design. All your formatting will be applied instantly.

Final Thoughts

Mastering the "Gap Width" setting is a simple yet powerful way to transform your Excel bar charts. Moving beyond the default skinny bars makes your data more legible, professional, and impactful. By taking a few moments to adjust the proportions and apply some basic design principles, you can create data visualizations that truly inform and persuade your audience.

We know that even with templates, manually formatting reports in tools like Excel or Google Sheets can eat up hours every week. That repetition is exactly why we created Graphed. We wanted to eliminate the busywork of pulling data and endlessly tweaking chart settings. You can connect all your sources - like Google Analytics, Shopify, and Salesforce - and build real-time dashboards just by asking questions in plain English. Instead of fighting with formatting menus, you just focus on the insights in your data.