#### Formatting the bars

To format the bars in a bar or bench chart, follow the steps below:

1. Right-click any bar in a bar/bench chart and select Format 2D Bar or Format 3D Bar from the shortcut menu to bring up the Format Bar dialog.
2. In the General tab, specify the general settings of the bars.

   In the Size and Layout boxes, set the size and layout of the bars. If the chart is a clustered 2-D chart which contains the data series (Z axis data), you can further specify the gap between the bars. For a 2-D chart, you can also set the style of the bars to be normal or cylinder, and if you want to add a 3-dimensional effect to the bars, set the Use Depth option to true and specify the depth and direction as required.

3. In the Fill tab, specify the fill type: Use Single Color, Use Single Color with Condition or Use Multiple Color with Condition.

   If you select Use Single Color as the fill type,

   - If the chart has no series field, click the color image button and select a color swatch to fill all the bars (you can also directly type the hexadecimal value of the desired color in the text box). If the color swatches cannot meet your requirement, click More Colors on the color palette to open the Pick a Color dialog, with which you can set a full range of color, or click More Fill Effects to specify the fill effect in the Fill Effects dialog. If you want to make the bar colors vary, check Vary Colors by Color List, then click the Color List button to specify the color pattern for each bar in the Color List dialog.
   - If the chart has series field, click the color image button and select a color swatch to fill the selected bars in the same data series. You can also click the Color List button to specify the color pattern for bars in the same data series in the Color List dialog.

   If you select Use Single Color with Condition or Use Multiple Color with Condition as the fill type, specify the conditions and the color pattern bound with each condition respectively. For details, refer to Adding conditional color fill to a chart.

4. In the Border tab, set the border mode for the bars (for details, see Formatting the platform).
5. In the Data Label tab, specify whether or not to show static data labels for every bar, and if to show, the position of the label related to the bar. When the position of the static data label is set to one of the following: inside center, inside top or inside bottom, you can further specify whether or not to display the data labels inside the bars at the best position. Then in the Font and Effects boxes, set the font formats and effects of the data labels.
6. In the Behaviors tab (this tab is only available to library components), select a trigger event from the drop-down list in the Events column, then click in the Actions column and click that appears in the text box to open the Web Action List dialog, where you can bind a web action to the bars which will be triggered when the specified event occurs on the bars.

   To add a web behavior line, click , and if a web behavior is not required, click to remove it.

   Click or to adjust the order of the behaviors. Then, when an event that has been bound with more than one action happens, the upper action will be triggered first.

   The web actions you can bind to the bars include Filter, Sort, Parameter, Property and SendMessage. For details about these web actions, refer to Applying web actions to a label.

7. When done, click OK to accept the changes and close the dialog.

See also the Format Bar dialog for page report, web report, or library component for detailed explanation about options in the dialog.

Notes:

- If the chart is a combo chart composed by bars and areas/lines, when you set the depth properties for the bars, they will be applied to the areas/lines as well, and vice versa.
- For 3-D charts, the Show Static Data Label checkbox in the Data Label tab is grayed out. However, you can still see the data labels by moving the mouse pointer over the bars when viewing the report result in Designer view mode, in HTML format, or in Page Report Studio.
- If you set the style of the bars to be cylinder, the style can take effect only when the Use Depth option is set to true at the same time.