How to Work with Charts in .NET

Step 1: Get the Library

Clone the repository and build Aspose.Words.sln in Release configuration, then add a project reference to Aspose.Words.csproj from your own .NET project, as described in the Installation guide.

Step 2: Insert a Chart and Simplify Its Appearance

DocumentBuilder.InsertChart(chartType, width, height) inserts a chart shape at the cursor and returns the containing Shape; its Chart property is the Chart object you configure, with AxisX, AxisY, Legend, and Title as its main sub-objects. Charting types live in the Aspose.Words.Drawing.Charts namespace alongside the core Aspose.Words namespace. A minimal, presentation-ready ChartType.Bar chart on a new Document often means setting Legend.Position to LegendPosition.None, setting Hidden and HasMajorGridlines on AxisY and AxisX, setting Title.Show to false, clearing the placeholder ChartSeriesCollection with Series.Clear() before calling Series.Add(seriesName, categories, values), pinning AxisY.Scaling.Maximum to a fixed AxisBound instead of letting it auto-scale, then writing the result with Document.Save. The full example — Document, DocumentBuilder, Chart, AxisX, AxisY, Legend, Title, ChartSeriesCollection, AxisBound, and Document.Save — looks like this:

using Aspose.Words;
using Aspose.Words.Drawing.Charts;

Document doc = new Document();
DocumentBuilder builder = new DocumentBuilder(doc);

Shape shape = builder.InsertChart(ChartType.Bar, 432, 252);
Chart chart = shape.Chart;
chart.Legend.Position = LegendPosition.None;

ChartSeriesCollection seriesColl = chart.Series;
chart.AxisY.Hidden = true;
chart.AxisY.HasMajorGridlines = false;
chart.AxisX.Hidden = true;
chart.Title.Show = false;

seriesColl.Clear();
chart.AxisY.Scaling.Maximum = new AxisBound(100);

string[] categories = new string[] { "AW Category 1" };
seriesColl.Add("AW Series 1", categories, new double[] { 30 });

doc.Save("chart.docx");

This builds a Document, inserts a ChartType.Bar chart, sets Chart.Legend.Position to LegendPosition.None to hide the legend, sets Hidden = true and HasMajorGridlines = false on chart.AxisY and Hidden = true on chart.AxisX, sets chart.Title.Show = false, clears the placeholder series with seriesColl.Clear(), fixes the value axis to a 100 maximum via chart.AxisY.Scaling.Maximum = new AxisBound(100), adds one real series with seriesColl.Add(seriesName, categories, values), and writes the result with Document.Save.

Step 3: Choose a Different Chart Type

ChartType covers the standard Word chart families — Line, Bar, Column (plus Stacked, PercentStacked, and 3D variants), Pie, PieOfPie, Doughnut, Area, Scatter, Bubble, Radar, Stock, Surface, and the Word 2016 types Treemap, Sunburst, Histogram, Pareto, BoxAndWhisker, and Waterfall. Pass the value you want as the chartType argument to InsertChart — there’s no member that changes an existing chart’s type after insertion, so pick the right one up front or replace the shape.

Step 4: Add and Format Data Labels

Set series.HasDataLabels = true before configuring series.DataLabels (a ChartDataLabelCollection) — its display toggles have no visible effect while labels are off. ShowValue, ShowCategoryName, and ShowPercentage control which pieces of information appear, and Position places them relative to the data point.

Step 5: Format an Individual Data Point

Index into a series’s DataPoints (a ChartDataPointCollection) to reach one ChartDataPoint and set its Format, Marker, Explosion, or InvertIfNegative independently of the rest of the series. This is how you highlight a single bar, slice, or marker without restyling the whole series.