Showing only top bars

Sometimes only the highest bars are of interest in a bar chart. In these cases, you can select how many of the highest bars to display and let the other bars be hidden.

About this task

Assume for example that only the top three bars in the bar chart below are of importance, and the other bars are not relevant to display. Then you can specify that only these three bars should be visible in the visualization.
Only top bars shown

Procedure

Place the cursor on the Category axis in the bar chart.
The axis is highlighted.
Click the highlighted area to access a pop-up menu.
In the Show only the top field, type how many bars to display, and press Enter.

Note: If you want to return to the original bar chart, repeat step 1 and 2, and then simply click Show only the top (do not click the text field).

Example

In this bar chart that shows test results for a number of individuals, more than one bar show the same value.

If 5 is specified in the Show only the top field, the resulting bar chart will display six bars as shown below. The reason is that, on the fifth place, there are two bars, John and Robert, with identical values.
Bar chart showing top bars only

Note: It is possible to show a notification in the legend that only top bars are displayed, as shown above.

Showing only top bar segments

If the bars in the bar chart are split into segments, the Show only the top setting is applied to the segments and not the entire bars.

In the stacked bar chart below, the yearly sums of different fruit sales are displayed.

If Show only the top is set to 3 in this stacked bar chart, only the top three segments are shown.
Bar chart showing top segments