The default appearance of chart can be customized to make it more appealing, explanatory and user friendly. With XlsxWriter, we can do following enhancements to a Chart object −

• Set and format chart title

• Set the X and Y axis titles and other parameters

• Configure the chart legends

• Chat layout options

• Setting borders and patterns

Title

You can set and configure the main title of a chart object by calling its set_title() method. Various parameters that can be are as follows −

• Name − Set the name (title) for the chart to be displayed above the chart. The name property is optional. The default is to have no chart title.

• name_font − Set the font properties for the chart title.

• Overlay − Allow the title to be overlaid on the chart.

• Layout − Set the (x, y) position of the title in chart relative units.

• None − Excel adds an automatic chart title. The none option turns this default title off. It also turns off all other set_title() options.

X and Y axis

The two methods set_x_axis() and set_y_axis() are used to axis titles, the name_font to be used for the title text, the num_font to be used for numbers displayed on the X and Y axis.

• name − Set the title or caption for the axis.

• name_font − Set the font properties for the axis title.

• num_font − Set the font properties for the axis numbers.

• num_format − Set the number format for the axis.

• major_gridlines − Configure the major gridlines for the axis.

• display_units − Set the display units for the axis.

In the previous example, where the data of marklist has been shown in the form of a column chart, we set up the chart formatting options such as the chart title and X as well as Y axis captions and their other display properties as follows −

chart1.set_x_axis(
   {''name'': ''Students'', ''name_font'':{''name'':''Arial'', ''size'':16, ''bold'':True},})
chart1.set_y_axis(
   {
      ''name'': ''Marks'', ''name_font'':
      {''name'':''Arial'', ''size'':16, ''bold'':True}, ''num_font'':{''name'':''Arial'', ''italic'':True}
   }
)

Example

Add the above snippet in the complete code. It now looks as given below −

import xlsxwriter

wb = xlsxwriter.Workbook(''hello.xlsx'')
worksheet = wb.add_worksheet()
chart1 = wb.add_chart({''type'': ''column''})

# Add the worksheet data that the charts will refer to.
headings = [''Name'', ''Phy'', ''Maths'']

data = [
   ["Jay", 30, 60],
   ["Mohan", 40, 50],
   ["Veeru", 60, 70],
]

worksheet.write_row(0,0, headings)
worksheet.write_row(1,0, data[0])
worksheet.write_row(2,0, data[1])
worksheet.write_row(3,0, data[2])

chart1.add_series({
   ''name'': ''=Sheet1!$B$1'',
   ''categories'': ''=Sheet1!$A$2:$A$4'',
   ''values'': ''=Sheet1!$B$2:$B$4'',
})

chart1.add_series({
   ''name'': [''Sheet1'', 0, 2],
   ''categories'': [''Sheet1'', 1, 0, 3, 0],
   ''values'': [''Sheet1'', 1, 2, 3, 2],
})
chart1.set_title ({''name'': ''Marklist'',
   ''name_font'': {''name'':''Times New Roman'', ''size'':24}
})
chart1.set_x_axis({''name'': ''Students'',
   ''name_font'': {''name'':''Arial'', ''size'':16, ''bold'':True},
})
chart1.set_y_axis({''name'': ''Marks'',
   ''name_font'':{''name'':''Arial'', ''size'':16, ''bold'':True},
   ''num_font'':{''name'':''Arial'', ''italic'':True}
})
worksheet.insert_chart(''B7'', chart1)

wb.close()

Output

The chart shows the title and axes captions as follows −