A gripe about chart colors in Apple’s iWork Numbers

Q. I think Apple’s iWork Numbers is brilliant for charts, but I want more colors. For a chart with more than a few items in a series, when using the default color fills the colors get recycled. How can I set my own colors for each item?

A. Ok, just to illustrate the issue: say you have the chart in the screenshot above (it’s one of the spreadsheets built in to Numbers). The row ‘Cornflakes’ is using the same color as ‘Home.’ It seems that Numbers just recycles the available colors. This just makes most charts confusing to read. The solution is not immediately obvious, but we can do better. Let’s set the color manually… (more…)