This page describes the options for editing line charts in the visualization menu. Click Edit in the upper right corner of the Visualization bar to format your visualization.
Some options listed on this documentation page may be grayed out or hidden in situations where they conflict with other settings that you have chosen.
Plot menu options
Series Positioning
You can specify how series are clustered visually on a chart. Not all of the following options apply to all chart types:
- Grouped: For column and bar charts. Series are clustered side-by-side.
- Overlay: For scatterplot, line, and area charts. Series are overlaid on the chart.
- Stacked: Series values are added on the y-axis, so that each consecutive series appears above the last. Be sure that the units of all series match.
- Stacked Percentage: Series values are presented as percentages stacked on the y-axis, where all values add up to between 99% and 101%. For additional precision, increase the Value Format decimal places.
Grid Layout
You can separate, or trellis, a chart into several smaller charts, each representing a single row or pivot from the results table.
You can separate a chart into a maximum of 12 smaller charts. If you have more than 12 rows or pivots, limit your data by using the Row Limit, Column Limit, or Limit Displayed Rows options.
The Grid Layout setting includes the following options:
None: Display the data as a single chart.
By Pivot: Separate the chart into multiple smaller charts based on a pivot in the results table.
By Row: Separate the chart into multiple smaller charts that correspond to the rows in the results table.
When you select By Pivot or By Row from the drop-down menu, the Number of Charts per Row option appears. You can input a number between 1 and 12. If you do not input a number, Looker arranges the charts as evenly as possible.
When used with dashboards, grid layout becomes responsive to the dashboard tile size and shape, as long as Number of Charts per Row is not set.
Line Interpolation
You can specify how lines are drawn on a chart:
- Linear: Displays straight lines between points
- Monotone: Displays smooth curves between points
- Step (center): Points are connected by steps, with the data point located in the middle of the step
- Step (before): Points are connected by steps, with the data point located at the beginning of the step
- Step (after): Points are connected by steps, with the data point located at the end of the step
Plot Null Values
You can toggle the appearance of null values on the chart. When toggled on, null values are plotted at zero. When toggled off, sections of line and area charts may show gaps. This parameter is only available when Series Positioning is Overlay.
Swap X and Y
You can toggle whether the x and y axes swap from the normal configuration. When swapped, dimensions are plotted on the y-axis, and measures are plotted on the x-axis.
Hide Legend
You can toggle the appearance of the series legend on a chart. This option is available only when there is more than one series (except in the case of a pie chart).
Legend Align
You can specify whether the series legend appears to the left, center, or right of the chart. This option is available only when Hide Legend is off and when there is more than one series.
Limit Displayed Rows
You can show or hide rows in a visualization, based on their position in the results. For example, if your visualization displays a seven-day rolling average, you may want to hide the first six rows.
Click Limit Displayed Rows to enable or disable this feature. When this feature is enabled, you can specify the following options:
- Hide or Show: Choose Hide to exclude certain rows from the visualization. Choose Show to display only a limited number of rows in the visualization.
- First or Last: Choose if the rows to hide or show are the first or last rows in the result set.
- Number: Specify the number of rows to hide or show.
In the Data section of the Look or Explore, excluded rows are shaded in a darker color.
This option is dependent on the row order. Changing the query's sort order or adding a row limit can change the rows that are shown or hidden in the visualization.
Edit Chart Config
The Edit Chart Config button at the bottom of the visualization menu opens the Chart Config Editor. This editor lets you modify HighCharts visualizations by exposing certain JSON parameters of the visualization, enabling deep customization. These customizations will not dynamically interact with data.
The Edit Chart Config button is available if you have either the Looker Admin role or the can_override_vis_config permission.
See the Examples section of the Chart Config Editor article for examples of some common use cases, including the following examples:
- Changing the background color and axis text color
- Conditional formatting of values within a series
- Customizing tooltip color
- Adding vertical reference bands and captions
- Adding chart annotations
Series menu options
The series menu controls how your chart shows each data series.
Colors
You can define the color palette for a chart in the Colors section.
Collection
A collection lets you create themed visualizations and dashboards that look good together. All of Looker's built-in color collections appear on the Color collections documentation page. Your Looker admin may also create a custom color collection for your organization.
You can choose a color collection from the Collection drop-down menu. The Palette section will update with a palette from your chosen color collection.
Palette
Once you've selected a color collection, you can choose a different palette from the collection, or customize your palette, by clicking the color palette itself. This opens the palette picker and displays all of the palettes from the collection.
Colors are assigned to each series in order. For a categorical palette, the first color in the palette is assigned to the first series, and so on. For a sequential or diverging palette, the color at the left end of the palette is assigned to the first series and the colors for each remaining series move to the right on the palette. If your query returns more data series than colors listed, the colors repeat from the beginning of the palette, first as a lighter version of each color, then as a darker version of each color.
Creating a custom color palette
To create a custom color palette, select the Custom tab on the palette picker. You can edit your palette in several ways:
- Click on one of the colors present to edit it.
- Click the + or - buttons to add a color to the end of the palette or to remove a selected color.
- Click EDIT ALL at the bottom right of the menu to use a comma-separated list of color values.
To change a selected color, or edit all colors at once, input hex strings, such as #2ca6cd, or CSS color names, such as mediumblue, into the color value box at the bottom of the picker.
To bring up a color picker to select a color, click the color wheel to the right of the color value box. The corresponding hex value for that color appears in the color value box.
If you click EDIT ALL, the color value box populates with the hex codes of the color palette you've chosen or customized. Copying and pasting this list is the best way to copy custom color palettes from one chart to another.
Reverse colors
You can reverse the colors used on a palette. For a categorical palette, this applies the last color in the palette to the first series, the second-to-last color in the palette to the second series, and so on. For a sequential or diverging palette, this applies the color at the right end of the palette to the first series and move left on the palette for the remaining series.
Show Full Field Name
You can determine whether to show the view name along with the field name for each axis title and series name. When Show Full Field Name is turned off, generally only the field name shows; however, measures of type count display only the view name instead.
Customizations
You can customize each series in the chart in several ways:
- Click the arrow next to a series to expand its options.
- Click the color swatch to select a custom color for the series. This overrides the color palette that's defined by the Colors option.
- In the Label section, enter a custom series label. This optional label impacts the chart legend and tooltips.
- In the Type section, select a different visualization type for the series. This optional setting is useful to combine different visualization types on the same chart, such as showing one series as columns and another series as a line.
- In the Points section, for line, area, or scatter series types, select the shape of the chart points.
Click the Custom Tooltip switch to configure tooltips within the Explore visualization editor by using a combination of UI settings and an HTML editor that supports Liquid templating. Learn more about custom tooltips.
Values menu options
Value Labels
You can toggle the appearance of value labels for each data point on a chart.
Label Null Columns
You can toggle the appearance of labels for null data points.
Value Colors
You can define the colors of the value labels. This field takes a comma-separated list of one or more color values. The color values can be formatted as RGB hex strings, such as #2ca6cd, or as CSS color names, such as mediumblue.
If set to multiple colors, colors are assigned to each series in order. The first series in the underlying table is assigned the first color, and so on. If the query returns more data series than colors listed, Looker will assign the series color to the value label after it runs out of your custom colors.
If no color values are provided, Looker assigns the series color to the value label.
Font Size
You can set the font size of value labels using any valid CSS size. For example, you can specify a number of pixels, such as 10px or 12px.
Value Rotation
You can set the rotation of the value labels. This parameter accepts values between -360 and 360, denoting the number of degrees to rotate the labels. Value Rotation is only available with Series Positioning Grouped or Overlay.
Value Format
You can specify the format of the value, independent of the underlying dimension or measure. The field accepts Excel-style formatting. If no formatting is specified, the value displays in the format of the underlying dimension or measure.
MS Excel's complete guide details how to specify these formats in their documentation. However, color formatting is not currently supported in Looker.
For Looker developers: The formatting used in the Value Format field is the same as formatting that is used with the
value_formatLookML parameter, except that thevalue_formatparameter requires the formatting string to be enclosed in double quotes. In the Value Format field, the formatting string is not enclosed in quotes.
The Adding custom formatting to numeric fields documentation page provides more information on how to use custom formatting.
X menu options
Scale Type
You can specify how the x-axis scale is calculated and displayed.
- Automatic Based on Data: The scale is inferred from the underlying data. This is the default setting.
- Ordinal: Data is plotted along the x-axis as evenly spaced, discrete entries, regardless of relative distance between data points.
- Linear: Data is plotted as linear numeric values. This option only applies when the underlying data can be converted to numbers.
- Time: Data is plotted as time values. The x-axis is labeled with appropriate time increments.
Reverse Axis
You can toggle the direction of the x-axis. When this is off, values increase from left to right. When this is on, values decrease from left to right.
Allow Zoom
This option is available only for Cartesian charts (column, bar, scatterplot, line, area, waterfall, or boxplot charts).
This option defaults to enabled. When it's enabled, you can zoom on a visualization in a dashboard, a Look, or an Explore.
See the Viewing dashboards or Viewing Looks in Looker documentation page for information about how to use the zoom feature.
When this option is disabled, the Allow Zoom option on the Y menu is hidden and you cannot zoom on the visualization.