How to Add a Chart Title and Legend Labels in Google Sheets

If you read how to create charts with multiple ranges of data, then your chart will also include a legend and a title. However, you might instead want a pie chart of the sales for the year 2019. What you do is to select the data to be included, and then insert a chart. What you get is the following by default:

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You may have noticed that there is no title and there is no legend to the chart... How can we add it?

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Add Chart Title

Step 1: Double click on the chart. A Chart Editor tab will appear on the right side.

Chart editor, Customize tab, Chart & axis titles

Step 2: Click on the Customize tab, and then click on Chart & axis titles. A drop-down box would appear. Type the title on the box below Title text.

Chart & axis titles, with Title text added

You might as well center the title by clicking on the Align icon from the left under Title format, and then select Center:

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Add Legend Labels

To add the legend labels, you must first make sure that the labels are on the same row as what they are describing, and are listed on the same column. To add them, here are the steps once you have reached the Chart editor:

Step 1: Click on the Setup tab, then click on the box below the Label.

Chart editor, Setup tab, Label, drop-down box

Step 2: We can either type the cells containing the labels or select them. We will select the cells instead. Click on the symbol of a small rectangle divided into four parts:

Chart editor, Setup tab, Label, drop-down box, Select a data range symbol highlighted

Step 3: A pop-up window will appear. Select the cells containing the labels. After choosing them, press OK.

Select a data range pop-up window, range of cells containing labels selected

Here is our completed chart:

Looks amazing, right? We can tweak this further to get better results:

Completed chart with title and improved labels

You can now make beautiful and understandable charts using Google Sheets. There is one important trick yet to be learned, especially useful when you have several sets of data being displayed at the same time.

Changing the Position of the Legend

We had this chart from the previously-linked tutorial at the top of the article:

We will now move the legend to the bottom.

At the Chart editor tab, click on the Customize tab, and then go to the Legend tab. A set of options will appear once you click on it.

If you click on the box below the Position, a drop-down box will appear containing the options for the position of the legend. Click Bottom. The Legend is now moved to the bottom of the chart.