Brick Chart - An alternative to gridlines in regular bar charts

Pointy Haired Dilbert - http://chandoo.org/wp - Feel free to copy, share and extend

Value Dummy
1
26 1 2
82 1 3
53 1 4
20 1 5
6
7 1 7
36 1 8
38 1 9
48 1
10 1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 70 75 80 85
1
1
1
1 1
2
1
2
3
4
3 5
6
4 7
8
5 9
6
7
8
9

0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 70 75 80 85 90 95 100

1 1
2 2
3 3
4 4
5 5
6 6
7 7
8 8
9 9
9 9
8 8
7 7
6 6
5 5
4 4
3 3
2 2
1 1
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 70 75 80 85 90 95 100 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 70 75 80 85 90 95 100
1 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 1.8 1.9 2 1 1.1 1 .2 1.3 1 .4 1.5 1 .6 1.7 1.8 1.9 2
60 65 70 75 80 85 90 95 100

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
9
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 70 75 80 85 90 95 100
0 0.2 0 .4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9

0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 70 75 80 85 90 95 100
How to prepare these charts?
1. Make a regular bar chart
2. Add a dummy series with 20 values (why 20? Because we want each brick to be of 5 units
on x axis)
3. Select the new series, and change chart type to column chart
4. Adjust new chart's axis so that the chart columns span the entire height or original chart
5. Format the columns such that we only see white outlines and no fill color
6. Remove un-necessary axis and format if needed

Learn more at
http://chandoo.org/wp