The question was raised by Craig Stevens about adding a line graph showing the average value of a bar graph in OpenOffice.org Calc.

Hi ALL,

Quick question, looked in documentation but didn't find, does calc charts support multiple data series, I have figure for the first 6 months of the year and the average, I can plot all in the one graph as regular bars but I want to plot the average as a line across the monthly figures.

Craig

This can be accomplished without much trouble. The first step is to make your bar graph. I constructed a bar graph to show swimsuit sales over the course of a year.

January	100
February	200
March	150
April	300
May	500
June	800
July	700
August	400
September	300
October	125
November	90
December	56

So, my graph looked something like this:

The hardest part of this process is selecting the data in the graph. I found that this is the best process:

1. Double click on the graph so that it is selected.
2. Single Click on a bar once so that the graph area is selected.
3. Single Click again in the same spot and that will select the data.

It will look like this:

Now, right click on the selected data points and select Object Properties.... That will open the following dialog:

Select the Mean Value check box and click OK. Now the average line will be displayed on the graph. You can adjust the size of the line in the normal way to suit your needs. I made my line a little bit bigger as in the following picture:

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Last updated 21 June 2006