Ggplot legend order not alphabetical Sep 2, 2022 · ggplot is refusing to cooperate with color assignments. However, when I see my legend, I want it to be a specific order. Follow + geom_bar() (i. For that, first we should load ggplot2 package using library() function. r; ggplot2; visualization; Share. 65 0. From what I've read, the default should be that the bars are stacked in the order that they are in my data frame, but they're not. How to force ordering of EffectNames to match descending order of Half_Effect? Can this be done in ggplot2? Yes it can! See solution below. I want the state labels to be in the same order as shown in the data table "AZ CT NH NM DE" but ggplot automatically reorganizes the state labels in alphabetical order "AZ CT DE NH". the numeric coding is z=c(2,1). Can the above be clarified/refined Jul 29, 2021 · However, what I would like to do here is to try and get the ordering on the y-axis sorted out different, say, G1 at the top, then G2, G3, G4 (but for the sake of having something reusable by more, let's imagine that the solution to just reverse the alphabetical order is not ok and that I want a custom order). I have a Masters of Science degree in Applied Statistics and I’ve worked on machine learning algorithms for professional businesses in both healthcare and retail. To display a character vector in non-alphabetical order we must encode it as a factor. When I used the following code, I am not getting the variable type and as well as size in the order shown in the data. 0. 2) Following an answer to a similar question I posted yesterday, i tried the following, based on the post Order Bars in ggplot2 bar graph : Mar 23, 2010 · “How to change the order of legend labels” is a question that gets asked relatively often on ggplot2 mailing list. By default, this will follow the alphabetical ordering "a", "b". I just want to be able to specify the order of the labels on the x axis. R sort by Year then Month in ggplot2. Any idea would be great. Not sure how to implement in python. Turning off some legends May 29, 2022 · You can reorder your factors - as several have shown - or you can convert your months into date objects, then ggplot will always order them chronologically. Commented Aug 15, How to rearrange legend order in ggplot. I would like the legend to be sorted in alphabetical order by Product. I saw the option suggested here for java. frame The difference is that the post in that my categorical variables are actually numbers as factors where that post uses strings. It continues to assign colors based on alphabetical order, even after I've assigned Factor levels. NM and TN). So all you are doing is writing over "a" with "b" and "b" with "a". Could someone suggest how the order can be reversed? EDIT: In the image that is generated the order of Feb 26, 2018 · It was suggested that this is a duplicate from ggplot2 geom_bar how to keep order of data. I've looked at several articles that have influenced the example here, but I can't make it work. When R sorts the values of a character vector, it always does so alphabetically. First, load the ggplot2 package by using the library() function. By Jan 27, 2017 · You want to modify the legend of a graph made with ggplot2. Mar 23, 2023 · The labels argument just creates new labels, overwriting the labels in the legend. Getting Started. Apr 14, 2020 · it looks like the levels haven't changed in order, if you look at the last three commands. The Levels: line tells you the levels of your factor variable, the line above that starting with [1] are the elements of the variable. But, if you use scale_fill_grey(), whatever comes first on the x-axis will be dark. What I'm trying to achieve is to fix the order of the separate legends so they always appear in the same order. you are re-leveling the derma2 factor, but then using x=derma Reorder legend on ggplot2. Change ggplot2 legend order without changing May 20, 2019 · Hi everyone. Dygraphs look great, I'm a big fan of interactive graphics - I just think they are completely tangential to the issue in this question. The same thing happens when Mar 28, 2018 · I have found that when adding coord_flip() to certain plots using ggplot2 that the order of values in the legend no longer lines up with the order of values in the plot. In this situation, the order of categories remains the same in both the graph and the legend. But if my data starts with Sat and different colors are assigned to Sat,Sun etc, then the legend order either begins with Sat(input data order) or with alphabetical order. Any advice on Feb 14, 2025 · I'm not too familiar with commands and programming and I'm relatively new at this. But I want to force the order to be Mon - Sun. As you can see, the order in the legend is not exactly what it should be: I would like to have "4 years" coming after "1 year". Any help on this would be most appreciated!!! Aug 27, 2024 · You need to know how to order your character/factor variable in non-alphabetical order to get a time-series object with the correct ordering. Sep 9, 2024 · In fact the commands only change the data. : scale_size(name = " B") + scale_colour_discrete Legend ordering in ggplot2. Jun 28, 2019 · The order of the legend appears in the reverse order(i. 0 the order aesthetic is deprecated. packages("ggplot2") Aug 8, 2022 · Hey there. 216. this case, I'm trying to specify the order of "Stage". 0. In fact, in the case of a vertical legend, ggplot2 actually infers the order of categories. Hi, I want to but the legend order came as alphabetical order. ggplot() I am not sure why the order of legend is not ordered as expected. Start with an example graph with the default options: Use guides(fill=FALSE), replacing fill with the desired aesthetic. Next, we can plot our data with default legend specifications (i. What I want to do (and have not yet achieved) is to reorder the legend key so that the price series that has risen the most is at the top of the Mar 21, 2016 · The legend gets sorted by which Product has the highest number of Patients. Nov 2, 2015 · I would like everything to remain the exactly the same, except for the legend, where I would like to change the order to levelB then levelC then levelA. (i. Example if the items of your legend are A,B,C then you could set the order to C,A,B with factor(my_items, levels = c('C', 'A', 'B')). geom_boxplot(aes(color = Species)) +. ggplot() + scale_color_manual(values = c("#D55E00 'three', etc. Jul 23, 2012 · I am trying to order the counts from high to low and the fill colours so that they match the alphabetic ordering of the legend. A Oct 28, 2021 · You can use the following syntax to change the order of the items in a ggplot2 legend: scale_fill_discrete(breaks=c('item4', 'item2', 'item1', 'item3', ) The following example shows how to use this syntax in practice. How to reverse legend (labels only) so high value starts at bottom? 1. I know if all the grouping variables were in one column, I could set it as an ordered factor, as it explained here, but my data are spread across multiple . If you have not installed it yet, you can simply install it by writing the below command in R Console. Commented Jun 30, 2016 at 19:53. This will only change the order of the keys in the final plot vs. While reorder(yy,-yy) can sort my numeric variable, reorder(xx,-xx) does not work. In. Skip to main content. – Gregor Thomas. This allows for the reordering of items in the legend according to a specified pattern or desired sequence. Feb 17, 2025 · Note that the plotted levels will be laid down according to the factor level order in the data (may be defined internally by ggplot2 if not already a factor). This is actually a part of a much more complicated function that creates many plots from distinct datasets and is the reasoning behind the use of [] to call appropriate coloring. r; ggplot2; Share. Viewed 1k times Part of R Language Collective 0 . Zach Bobbitt. frame into alphabetical order which is exactly what I would like to avoid` – Stücke. alphabetical order): As shown in Figure 1, we drew a ggplot2 plot and a legend with the previous R code. We can create a factor with factor() and provide it a character vector of Apr 15, 2025 · In this article, we are going to see how to set the legend alpha of the ggplot2 Plot in R Programming Language. Jun 7, 2022 · The display order of the legend follows the default settings of the ggplot2 package (i. So, a pure ggplot approach (as an alternative to tmfmnk's answer) would be: Mar 14, 2022 · I recently wrote about the release of tidytext 0. ggplot2. I'm guessing ggplot2 orders the legend alphabetically and I would like to override this. 455. 8275 SC_STSL_BM 17. Hot Network Questions Mar 15, 2019 · When R makes something into factor it defaults to sorting the levels into "increasing order of x" (from documentation of factor()). Learn how to change the title, the labels, the keys, how to modify the background color, change its position or get rid of it Oct 23, 2016 · Result: Bar heights are in following order. Modified 3 years, 10 months ago. I have succeeded in getting multiple lines on the plot and adding values showing the most recent change in price. I managed to plot three lines in the same graph and want to add a legend with the three colors n sort neatly, though when I adapt this to my variable names, the colours seem to get matched in alphabetical order to the 'breaks', not in the order input. Feb 28, 2025 · Thank you. Adrian Feb 26, 2025 · This kinda works but Months on x-axis are not order from January, February, March, April December. 136. 6 0. Here are my attempts: Jan 18, 2025 · I am not sure why the order of legend is not ordered as expected. I was wondering how Oct 12, 2021 · The simplest solution is to probably use one of the scale_*_* functions to set the order of the keys in the legend. May 2, 2020 · Specifying row order can ba a bit tedious, so I often transpose the dataframe, order the categories that now appear in the column, and transpose it right back to its original form: order = ['till 500', '501-600', '601-1000', 'more 1001'] df_ordered = df. 4693 B_GC_Sp 15. , with the current version 3. Aug 6, 2021 · Now when you plot sample as an aesthetic, ggplot has a factor component to work with already, so it won't try and make a new one (this new factor would have been in alphabetical order, which we circumvent with the ordered=TRUE parameter in our custom factor). I have been trying to adjust it for a few hours with the tips from the initial posts but without sucess. I have looked at many answers on Sep 22, 2024 · I created the following graph in R using ggplot2. 2 dplyr_0. I did do something similar to your suggestion in the first place but my teacher said it was hard to tell to what extent the confidence bands overlap - which is Jan 24, 2018 · A nice post I saw on twitter about how to reverse the order of a ggplot2 legend got me thinking about a graph I’d been making at work recently. Change order of filling variable on a ggplot geom_bar. 2 of ggplot2, the order is alphabetical for a char variable, or respects the factor Sep 11, 2014 · I am not entire sure what you are asking; I am confused. One more thing: you need to reference Feb 3, 2025 · So I couldn't think of a way to use relevel and change the order of my legend labels. This may have changed and become easier with he new ggplot but I'm not sure. The following syntax explains how to reverse the order of a ggplot2 graphic legend. Add and customize the legends in ggplot2. So I am setting the breaks and the color values in scale_fill_manual(), and I would expect that the first color "black" would be Jul 8, 2021 · I am creating a plot that has 2 legends using both ggplot2 and ggnewscale. 6 10. e. I've also looked here. T[order]. Posted in Programming. 4986 What I want to do is to make a bar plot and maintain the order of the bar, (i. Apr 7, 2025 · whats the best way to invert the legend label order so the 7 is down and the 1 is upstairs? Reverse stacking order without affecting legend order in ggplot2 bar charts. My Code: MyX<-c(1,2,3,4,5) MyY<-c ggplot is arranging the MyCat variable in alphabetical order in order to avoid that, Jul 16, 2024 · Reorder ggplot2 legend. install. Since I specify the Group as a factor and specify the level order ("B" is always first as "group_1") I would have thought the color would have been consistent for "B" but it changes. 1 Mar 6, 2011 · This will also be significantly faster than reordering the factor levels beforehand since the count is done in dplyr not in ggplot or using table. alphabetical order): geom_point () . 4 AB ABC AC BC Hook(B) Peg(C) PullBack(A) Bar heights are not in order seen in Half_Effect. tidyverse. 2. ggplot2: how to change the order of a legend. I've been trying to learn how to use ggplot2 to make a presentable dotplot, and for the most part it seems doable. But the default behavior of ggplot geom_bar is to sort Sep 19, 2010 · I've recently been struggling with a related issue, discussed at length here: Order of legend entries in ggplot2 barplots with coord_flip(). 6 days ago · Reordering groups in a ggplot2 chart can be a struggle. 4. The problem is that the colours/shape are being set up based on the 2 days ago · How can I control the order of boxes in a side-by-side box plot? Change the order of the levels of the factor variable you’re faceting by. In this case, I'm trying to specify the order of "Treatment". Using ggplot, the color order does not match the text order as written. I made the following code, which reads a table (with 10 columns) and generates a line graph. Apr 6, 2012 · Interestingly, for your 1st set of examples, prepending a space to each name does cause the legends to appear in alphabetical order. The placement of the layers, ordering, and coloring of the geoms on in the panel of the plot area will remain the same. The problem is, it reorders the legend alphabetically. 77 0. Modified 5 years, 1 month ago. Jan 22, 2022 · Also, we reordered the factor levels for range, so the order of objects in the legend is set the way it should be and looks the way it should be thanks to the labels= argument. I want to manually set the colours and shape to each line. Everything works out, except the order of the stacked bars on the left side of the plot. Aug 27, 2024 · I'm fairly new to R and I currently can make an ok boxplot, but I'd like instead of S16 or S127 for the labels to be "#16 (auto)" and "#127 (X-linked)" and similar for the other sample labels. The images and code below show a Mar 19, 2017 · But sorts by alphabetical order still -- I have checked here and here but still doesnt sort from 2014-Apr to 2015-Apr. freely choose the linetype, freely choose the order in which these linetypes appear in the legend, and ; have the corresponding "method" shown as legend text. Reverse fill order for histogram bars in ggplot2. Try this. 3. 98 6. 1, and one of the most useful new features in this release is a couple of helper functions for making plots with ggplot2. A variation of this question is how to change the order of series in stacked bar/lineplots. Apr 16, 2017 · I am trying to figure out diverging stacked bar charts made in ggplot. Galal July 16, 2024, 11:17pm 1. Setting the legend alpha of the plot using the alpha argument of the guide_legend function from the ggplot2 Jan 19, 2018 · A quick example of reversing the legend order in a ggplot2 plot, which is done via guide_legend() instead of by changing the order of the levels in the dataset. That is, even when you reorder the levels of your factor for the axis, you will end up seeing the first bar plot has dark colour. I'm new to the ggplot2 package and I'm trying to build a line graph. I will also consider your comment about my plot being ugly. Hi, My issue is that I want to plot a distribution with sta_function, but with different parameters. How would I order the x-axis from January to December? Is there Mar 7, 2025 · I am plotting line charts showing the change in price over time for multiple instruments, using ggplot2. How to use a variable to specify column name in ggplot. As it happens, the reason I had a hard time explaining my issue clearly, involved the relation between (the order of) factors and coord_flip(), as seems to be the case here. Jul 2, 2024 · The order of items in a ggplot2 legend can be changed by using the “limits” function in the “scale” argument. g. alphabetically sorted). You can sort your input data frame with sort() or arrange(), it will never have any impact on your ggplot2 output. . However, one major issue so far is that R seems to automatically rearrange the variables on the X axis in alphabetical and/or numerical order. numbers <- 1:4 letters <- fact Feb 4, 2025 · I need to plot a bargraph of the above data using ggplot (x-axis -> type, y-axis -> amount, group by size). My name is Zach Bobbitt. Mar 1, 2017 · But this in not correct as values in bars are not correct. How to modify the ordering of legend items of a ggplot2 graph in R - R programming example code - Reproducible information - Detailed syntax in RStudio Data Hacks Menu Mar 4, 2010 · I have data frame with some numerical variables and some categorical factor variables. Sep 26, 2024 · I specified the order of the factor variable, Group, but the colors change with the alphabetical order as opposed to the factor order. Stack Overflow. Mar 6, 2012 · The problem is that the items in the legend are not in the same order as the stacks they represent. In R, factors a special data format that can not only store data, but also store intrinsic orderings. Follow answered Mar 6, 2012 at 4:29. However, in ggplot2 v2. starting with SC_LTSL_BM B_GC_Sp). Is this possible? r; plotly; Share. As long as I see from your question, you may want to manually assign colours to bars. the data input is from a phyloseq object, kindly, is there any solution for this issue with ggplot2? Thank you. T With this order, the result will be the same as the figure above. (I’ve use forcats::fct_inorder a lot for getting the levels Feb 18, 2017 · However, the legend shows the labels in alphabetical order, but I would like to display them in the same order as bars are drawn in the chart : Positive then Neutral then Negative. Nov 8, 2024 · I have a question about legends in ggplot2. Please note: I have simplified my code here. 0 I ordered the fill of geom_bar() using the order aesthetic in addition to making the column used as fill a factor with the levels ordered as desired, and it worked (even though doing both was probably redundant). If you look at the Levels: for the three last commands, they do change, from alphabetic to reversed-alphabetic to custom / hard-coded. Apr 15, 2025 · In this article, we will see how to change display order of ggplot2 legend in R Programming Language. I created groups so I could display ranges in "num" values (ex. Tyler Rinker Tyler Rinker. The year doesn't really matter unless you have more than 12-months of data, and if your data is for a specific year then use that. 8 KB. For example, the following example draws "D" on top of "A", even though I specify a different order in the legend: Sep 2, 2015 · I've struggled with the same issue before. And the way to do that is to transform your data into a factor variable. 1 ggplot2_2. 1. But the reason I did it that way is because I actually have more than 6 years of data so the plots will be more compressed. Related. , using guide_legend()) is required for horizontal legends, but not for vertical legends. dd 707×733 54. Apr 3, 2022 · I'm plotting the same data by different time scales (Week, Month, Quarter, etc. While these two questions seem to be related, in fact they are separate as the legend is controlled by scales, whereas stacking is controlled by the order of values in the Jan 19, 2018 · Change the data to change the plot? Now, a lot of time the answer to “how do I change the order of a categorical variable in ggplot2” is change the data to change the plot. the original. Of course I can create another variable myorder 1 for Mon and 7 for Sun then group by myorder. How to avoid reordering and keep the original ordering? I already read how to avoid it by removing the breaks but I could not sort it out. For example: dTbl = data. Viewed 1k times Part of R Language Collective Remove legend ggplot 2. But that’s not the only way so let’s look at it in more details. 5051 B_Fo_Sp 14. asked Jul 10, 2018 at 19:23. When I use that solution, my numbers still do not plot in numeric order. These helper functions address a class of challenges that often arises when dealing with text data, so we’ve included them in the tidytext package. Cannot change the order of my legend components in ggplot. Hot Network Questions Variable selection strategy for *descriptive* modeling Feb 18, 2025 · However, I want to sort the string variable xx in reverse alphabetical order but cannot seem to get it. Is there any way to achieve that? r; Mar 23, 2010 · “How to change the order of legend labels” is a question that gets asked relatively often on ggplot2 mailing list. How to control ordering of stacked bar chart using identity on ggplot2. I have both put my dataset in the order I would like the legend and tried Feb 1, 2018 · Hi! I am using ggplot2 quite often, and I ran into a problem concerning the ordering of colors. If you want to change the ordering of labels, you can specify the order using breaks. You don't need labels at all unless you want to actually change the text of the Feb 14, 2018 · I am trying to re-order my legend in ggplot such that "control" is listed first and than concentration is arranged low-high. This post explains how to reorder the level of your factor through several Sep 4, 2011 · However, the variables are listed in reverse alphabetical order, but not by vartype: the order=vartype aesthetic is ignored. So the solution to your problem is to sort your data by the fill factor in the reverse order you want it to appear in the legend: bottom item on top of the dataframe, and top item on bottom: Feb 11, 2015 · Thank you all for your replies, they are helpful in furthering my understanding. By default, it Jan 24, 2020 · Do not want legend labels in alphabetical order (GGPLOT2) Ask Question Asked 5 years, 1 month ago. The problem is that Aug 9, 2013 · I'm trying to draw 3 lines from my data set on the same graph, and display them using ggplot2. when I specify the order with scale_fill_manual, I get this: which indeed change the order in the legend to correct, but not the squares with colours: [![enter image description here][2]][2] And when I run ggplotly- that command also removes all my specified order. While these two questions Jul 2, 2021 · In this article, we will see how to Reverse the order of Legend Items of ggplot2 plots in the R programming language. t. 143. This is alphabetical order for character vectors. 7. I see why ggplot might not want to honor the order of rows in a data frame when it is doing the aggregating, such as a stat="bin", but when stat="identity", I've already aggregated and ordered my data in the way that makes sense and that's how I want it ordered, but of course, I don't Jan 14, 2015 · The default options for grouporder is data. The order of levels for those factors is not the way I want them to be. Adrian. FJCC July 16, 2024, 11:50pm 2. 312. Share. Improve this question. Oct 17, 2017 · I don't want to do anything with the data, I just want to change the Legend order, so that the darkblue category 'Outlier' is depicted on top of the lightblue category 'NOutlier'. I'd rather not just change the label in the original file since I have plenty of stats based on the current labeling. Apr 11, 2025 · Since ggplot2 version 2. e from bottom to top). I know that R organize the boxplot alphabetically. About; How to change legend title in ggplot. Let’s change this order! Example: Reverse Ordering of ggplot2 Plot Legend Using guides() & guide_legend() Functions. This is very helpful +1. 5 plotly_4. 5 5. Apr 29, 2016 · The reason I am exploring this approach is that I would like my plot colours and symbols to be the same in English and French, while at the same time having the legend keys ordered alphabetically. I followed an example posted here. I want to change the order from top to bottom of the corresponding items in data. 10. Oct 8, 2020 · I'm using ggplot2 to plot the annual occurrence of events in states. This is due to the fact that ggplot2 takes into account the order of the factor levels, not the order you observe in your data frame. Improve this answer. But, it is Dec 3, 2017 · I want to create a boxplot with ggplot2 and I'd like to organize the plot in the order of the data frame, e. May 30, 2014 · When I make the plot R orders the y axis by alphabetical order, how do you . Now code that used to work produces out of order fills. How to plot ggplot2 plot with default order? If we want to use the functions of the ggplot2 package, we also have to install and load ggplot2 to RStudio. They are order aphabetically from April, August etc. 1580 preB_FrD_FL 18. Order Stacked Bar Graph in ggplot. Jul 27, 2023 · You're welcome, and precisely, that's the issue: manual adjustment (e. However, I have not yet found a practicable solution. Dec 6, 2018 · I would like to have a multi-bar chart, horizontal bars, where the legend for the bar-color is in the same order as the bars themselves. ggplot geom_bar does not follow dataframe order. How can I: Organize the X axis in the order Taste - Color - Jul 29, 2011 · That does not work bc for factor z=c("b","a") the underlying numbers applied by R follow alphabetic order (which makes sense) s. Let’s work through an example To show how to use Aug 16, 2016 · Label order is defined by the order inherent in your data (which will default to alphabetical order unless you tell it something else). Sep 29, 2020 · After manually adding a legend to my plot, as described by @andresrcs, I want to reorder the legend entries. Load the ggplot2 package and set the theme function theme_classic() as the default theme: theme_classic() . I’m passionate about statistics, machine learning, and data visualization and I created Statology to be a resource for both students and teachers alike. marcopah bindrcpp_0. Feb 7, 2023 · The easiest way to change the order of the legend items in ggplot is to do specify the ordering directly in your data frame by setting the factor levels. Follow asked Mar 21, 2016 at 7:35. Order of legend entries in ggplot2 barplots with coord_flip() 0. add sample size (n=xx) in each legend label in ggplot. But, now I know, reordering a factor has nothing to Jul 13, 2020 · all is correct except the legend order when I add scale_fill_manual. Jan 5, 2016 · Before v2. Sep 22, 2020 · On the legend I want to report the values, but since ggplot sorts the numbers in alphabetic order, 10 comes before 3. It appears that ggplot stacks the bars based on their appearance in the dataframe. How do you specifically order ggplot2 x axis instead of alphabetical order? 162. 3914 proB_FrBC_FL 122. diverging stacked bar chart. As shown in Figure 1, we drew a ggplot2 plot and a Jan 5, 2019 · In this article, you will learn how to change a ggplot legend order. ) using ggplot, and as a result, I'm pulling the data from different columns. 1 you don't need to reorder the rows of your data frame to establish the order of the stack in your plot. 110k 72 72 Jul 27, 2022 · If we create a bar plot to visualize the points scored by each team, ggplot2 will automatically order the bars in alphabetical order: library (ggplot2) #create bar plot ggplot(df, aes(x=team, y=points)) + geom_col() To How to Change Legend Labels in ggplot2. Mar 23, 2016 · I have the following data which I want to plot with ggplot: SC_LTSL_BM 16. To install ggplot2 package, write following command to R Console. The forcats package offers a variety of options for doing this, such as Jun 1, 2021 · Change alphabetical order in ggplot R [duplicate] Ask Question Asked 3 years, 10 months ago. Additionally, the “guides” function can also be utilized to customize the appearance and position of the legend within the ggplot2 graph. Follow edited Jul 10, 2018 at 20:02. Here, we get the exact same result because ggplot by default doesn’t care how you sort the rows of your data. packages(“ggplot2”) library(“ggplot2”) To Create a plot, we use ggplot() function and for making scatter plot , we Dec 6, 2011 · How can I get "method" in the legend? In the end I would like to be able to . Jan 7, 2019 · I'm making a scatter plot and I'd like to specify the order of the text in the legend, as well as the colors. That’s why you have to force ggplot to do what you want. change order of legends for multiple aesthetics.