Customizing Your Graph > Customizing Plot Elements > Plot Details Controls > The (Plot Details) Label Tab

9.3.7.9 The (Plot Details) Label Tab

You can specify label source in two ways:

Using the Label Form drop-down on this tab, you select the source (and form) of the data label. This gives many options including X and Y values, metadata, information from other column(s) in the worksheet, or even a custom label.
You can pre-designate a column of data as a Label column and co-select the label column with your Y column, when creating your graph.

Note that pre-designating a worksheet Label column and using it to label a plot no longer creates a label dataset in Plot Details, as it did in earlier versions of Origin. All data labels now use the Label tab controls of the Y dataset, as documented below.

Label Tab Controls

Label tab for 2D line and/or symbol plot or 2D Column/Bar plot in Cartesian coordinate system

Label tab for Box Chart(Only available when the Box Labels check box is selected in the Box tab) or Histogram graph.

In the Box plot, this tab controls the setting for the label of Box Range, Whisker, Mean or Median.

Label tab for 2D Vector

Label tab for Dendrogram

Label tab for Heatmap

Label tab for Circular Packing Graph

Enable

Select this check box to enable adding labels to data plots.

Note that prior to Origin 2020b, checking this box enabled labels for all plots in a plot group. To accommodate improvements to showing data at specified points only, this box now only enables labels for the selected plot, whether or not it is part of a group. However, you can still use the Show Data Labels button on the Mini Toolbar to label all plots.

To add data labels to ALL plots in your group, simultaneously:

In the graph window, click to select any plot in the group.
On the Mini Toolbar "group" tab, click Show Data Labels.
To customize what is displayed by the label, click to select a label and from the Mini Toolbar, click Label Source and choose how you want to label data points.
- Note that available Label Sources will vary by plot type and available column label row data (see Mini Toolbar tables).
- For information on specifying Custom strings, see Numeric Display Format/Format Strings, below.

Show at Specified Points Only

Check this box to label specified data points only. Once enabled, use the list box to locate labels by:

<drop line>: Labels will be added only at drop line locations (specified on the Drop Lines tab). Note that drop lines can be located by interpolation of actual data points whereas labels can only be added to actual data points. Therefore, only drop lines from actual data points can be labeled in this way.
<L#>: For the Circular Packing graph, you can select <L#> to decide the node labels of which level will be shown, such as <L1> means show the labels for the parent nodes in first level. And, you also can select <Leaves> to just show the labels for leaves(nodes in the last level of each hierarchy line).
Begin or Beg or -1: Label will be added to the first data point within the layer.
End or 0: Label will be added to the last data point within current layer.
Max/Min: Label the point with maximum/minimum Y/Z.
By dataset: Pick a dataset from the drop-down list to use for labeling. Values will be assigned to points by row index.
By row index or X value: Refer to the following table.

Syntax	Description	Example
a b c d e	Show labels at space-separated list of row indices	1 4 5 9
n:m:s	Show labels from rows n to m, skipping every s rows	2:0:5
x=a b d g	Show labels at x values	x=3.5 7.8 10.2 14.0
[BookN]sheetM!col(A)	Show labels at row indices contained in specified column	[Book1]Sheet2!Col(A)
x=[BookN]sheetM!col(A)	Show labels at x values listed in specified column	x=[Book1]Sheet2!Col(A)

One use of this feature might be to use plot metadata to label individual plots instead of using a standard graph legend. For more information, see FAQ-1065 How to label each line plot with a legend-type entry?

Font

Select the desired font for label text.

Select Default: FontName to use the font determined by the Default drop-down list on the Text Fonts tab of the Options dialog box.(Preferences: Option).

Size

Type or select the desired font size (in points) for the label text.

The default size is determined by the Size combination box value in the Text Tool group on the Text Fonts tab of the Options dialog box (Preferences: Options).

Color

Select a color for the labels.

If color is set to Auto and the Auto Color of Label Follows Symbol box is selected on the Miscellaneous tab (page level) of Plot Details, then label color follows symbol color.

If color is set to Auto and the Auto Color of Label Follows Symbol box is cleared on the Miscellaneous tab (page level) of Plot Details, then label color will be chosen to display in highest contrast to the background color.

White Out

Select this check box to put a white background behind each label.

Rotate (deg)

Type or select the angle, in degrees, by which to rotate the label.

Positive values rotate the label counter-clockwise.
Negative values rotate it clockwise.

Zero degrees is horizontal text.

Emphasis

This checkbox is only available for special points.
When a data point becomes special, its properties will follow that of the plot until you customize it. Emphasis means the Bold, Italic and Underline label formats of this special point follows the plot. Uncheck it to edit the formatting buttons below.

The formatting buttons

Click the text formatting buttons (Bold, Italic, and Underline) to format the label text.

Alignment

Used to align multi-line data labels. Not available for all plot types.

Auto: Follow the Position setting:

If Position = Right, position labels to the right of the labeled point and left-align multi-line labels.
If Position = Left, position labels to the left of the labeled point and right-align multi-line labels.
If Position = Center/Above/Below, center-align multi-line labels.

Other combinations are possible by setting Alignment = Left, Right or Center.

Frame

Specify whether add a frame around the label text. This option is not available for Box Chart.

Three selections are available for this drop-down list: None, Box and Shadow.

None is select by default; meanwhile, Border and Fill color control will be disabled.
When Box is selected, a box will be added as a frame around the label text.
When Shadow is selected, a box and its shadow will be added around the label text.

Please note that the Frame option will be set to Auto for the special point by default. It means that the settings of special point will follow that of the whole plot. Of cause, you can customize these settings for the special point for your own needs.

Border

When Box or Shadow is select as Frame, you can set a border color for box of the labels.

Fill

When Box or Shadow is select as Frame, you can set a fill color for box of the labels.

Margin(% Font Height)

Adjust the margin of the frame in the percent of font height. The top/bottom/left/right margin shares the same value. This option is not available for Box Chart.

Please note that this option will be set to Auto for the special point by default. It means the settings of special point will follow that of the whole plot. Of cause, you can customize these settings for the special point for your own needs.

Label Source

Label Form

Specify the quantities or data set to be used for creating the label.

X	Use X values of the data as labels.
Y	Use Y values of the data as labels.
Row Indices	Use row indices as labels.
(X, Y)	Use both X and Y values of the data as labels.
Custom	Use content and format specified in Format String to create the labels (see next section).
Col(ColumnShortName)	Use the desired column from the worksheet as labels. All columns located to the right of the data Y column will be listed here.

Numeric Display Format/Format String

When Label Form is set to X, Y or (X/Y) or Col(ColumnShortName), a Numeric Display Format box becomes available. See Origin Formats. Supported formats include D (date) and T (time) options as long as the date and time data display in the worksheet as numeric Julian Date values.
When Label Form = Custom, a Format String box becomes available. See Syntax and notations used in plot label.
Note that clicking on the Numeric Display Format or Format String lists shows prototyped formats.

Numeric Display Format Notes:

If you have applied a Formula to axis tick labels, you can display the formula-adjusted tick value as opposed to the actual data (scale) value by entering X or Y into Numeric Display Format (e.g. if you have entered a formula for Y axis labels, set Label Form = Y and Numeric Display Format = Y). Please note, if you want to the label value follow the axis major tick label format, such as decimal digit place, you can enter Xt or Yt for the Numeric Display Format box.

Format String Notes:

In this box, column designators col() and wcol() and arbitrary fixed strings can be combined, as desired.
The %() substitution and $() substitution can be used here (for example, $(wcol(n)[i], *4) translates to "show the Y values of the current plot and set decimal places to 4" or %(?,@LL) translates to "show the Long Name of current Y column as labels", with L indicating the Long Name of current column -- see Column Label Characters for a full list of the column label rows' substitute characters).
Columns to the left or right of the current Y column can be referred to by column index (e.g. col(2)[i] or wcol(n+1)[i]), or by Short or Long Name (e.g. col(B)[i] or col(Percent)[i]).
Numeric and date/time formats are modified using these specifiers.
Before Origin 9.0, you could only use $(x) to get numeric values. Origin 9.0 and later support x$/y$/z$ which is useful for categorical data. For example, %(X$) is used to return categorical data in the x column, whereas $(x) only shows the index value of the categorical data.