How to create two-dimensional column chart in Microsoft Excel for Office 365

Question

I would like to create a two-dimensional column chart in Excel. On the x-axis I would like to plot % of Net Sales, and on the y-axis I would like to plot Gross Margin %. Here's an example:

You can see on the x-axis, percentage of Net Sales for the top 10 customers is just over 25%, and the gross margin on those ten customers is just under 30%. Net sales for the next 20 customers compose about 15% and the gross margin on those sales are around 26%

Here is my data:

Customer segment          Revenue   %of Net Sales   Gross Margin %
Customers 1-10          6.96 mill           20.7%            37.1%
Customers 11-30         5.68 mill           16.9%            42.2%
Customers, remaining   20.98 mill           62.4%            47.5%

Answer 1

Bar Charts in Excel do not vary their width as you are illustrating in your graph to the best of my knowledge. The best I can do and its labour intensive is to outline the bars using an X-Y line scatter plot. you have to create all the points of your bar and then plot them. In my example I plotted them as a single series so it all the same colour, but you could plat it as individual series to get different colour or line pattern to the bar out line. Unfortunately I do not know of a way fill in the bar. (you could technically do it with a bunch of side by side lines).

my approximate solution created the points of interest in column E and F. E being your X axis and F being your Y axis. E is a running total based on your values from column C. F is your Y value starting at 0 for the axis and the your value from D going across repeating and then back down to zero. This results in the graph on the left below. You can add text to your graph using text boxes.

For separate series to get different line colour the same process was followed except I separated the information in to separate columns in H through O. Technically speaking you could have done this all from the info in columns E and F but you would need to be more careful grabbing the information for the start and end of your series data. Separate columns just makes for easier reading.

And here is an example of filling in the column by drawing a line back and forth and only increasing the the Y value by 1/100 of the max column value until the top of the column was reached. Play with the 1/100 increase to find something that suits your needs. In addition I turned the point markers off.

The reason you want to play with the 1/100 height step is if you move the chart from being and part of the sheet to being a page on its own, the lines start to show their gap.