Highcharts: having trouble recreating stacked area chart from Excel with positive and negative values

Question

I'm converting a series of Excel charts into Highcharts, and came across a curious situation involving a stacked area chart with both positive and negative values.

Here is now the chart is displayed in Excel, along with the accompanying data points. For illustration purposes, I've selected series G. Despite having all positive values in its data, it appears at the bottom of the stack, beneath the zero line.

Here is how the chart appears in Highcharts (see below). In this instance, series G appears above the chart, and all of the other series appear much differently than in Excel.

For reference, a fiddle of this chart can be found here: http://jsfiddle.net/brightmatrix/woye6xxw/. I've also included a code sample at the bottom of this post.

I've referred to the following questions here on Stack Overflow, but neither of which has been helpful in solving my issue, unfortunately:

• Highcharts - Area Chart - Stacking with series containing negative and positive values
• Highcharts - areaspline with negative values, area should be always at the bottom

Is there an attribute or setting that I'm missing in the API documentation that will permit the chart to draw these series in the same stacking order as in Excel? Is this possible in Highcharts?

$(function () {
  Highcharts.chart('container', {
    chart: { type: 'area', },
    title: { text: 'Stacked Area Chart in Highcharts' },
    xAxis: { categories: ['2007','2008','2009','2010','2011','2012','2013','2014','2015','2016'] },
    plotOptions: {
      series: { 
        marker: { enabled: false }, stacking: 'normal'
      },
    },
    series: [
      { name: 'Total', data: [0,0.08,-0.31,-1.09,-1.82,-2.18,-2.49,-3.05,-3.12,-3.15] }, 
      { name: 'A', data: [0,-0.212001,-0.409192,-0.559879,-0.81,-1.089119,-1.313719,-1.606092,-1.808868,-2.041628] }, 
      { name: 'B', data: [0,0.239857,0.637651,0.733988,0.85,0.855423,0.938974,0.912378,1.017854,0.985514] }, 
      { name: 'C', data: [0,-0.096543,-0.271997,-0.512372,-0.70,-0.665893,-0.723534,-0.879249,-0.890587,-0.821584] }, 
      { name: 'D', data: [0,-0.098096,-0.170803,-0.688206,-0.92,-0.918492,-0.876488,-0.967249,-0.954217,-1.029596] }, 
      { name: 'E', data: [0,0.17794,0.31787,0.36,0.37,0.23917,0.17944,0.14766,0.05938,0.24891] }, 
      { name: 'F', data: [0,0.029755,-0.45174,-0.397836,-0.61,-0.56368,-0.593108,-0.462725,-0.351842,-0.210976] }, 
      { name: 'G', data: [0,0.013198,0.055014,0.019322,0.07,0.077394,0.061947,0.010502,0.035015,-0.055604] }
    ]
  })
});

Answer 1

After mulling this over the weekend, I tried adding some of the series to different groups (stacks) and was able to achieve what I wanted.

First, I added the two topmost series from the Excel spreadsheet (series E and B in my example) to stack "I" in order from top to bottom. Then, I added the remaining series to a second stack, "II," which appears below the zero line, in order from bottom to top.

Here's the revised series code:

series: [
  { name: 'Total', type: 'line', data: [0,0.08,-0.31,-1.09,-1.82,-2.18,-2.49,-3.05,-3.12,-3.15] },  
  /* stack I items */
  { name: 'E', stack: 'I', data: [0,0.17794,0.31787,0.36,0.37,0.23917,0.17944,0.14766,0.05938,0.24891] }, 
  { name: 'B', stack: 'I', data: [0,0.239857,0.637651,0.733988,0.85,0.855423,0.938974,0.912378,1.017854,0.985514] }, 
  /* stack II items */
  { name: 'G', stack: 'II', data: [0,0.013198,0.055014,0.019322,0.07,0.077394,0.061947,0.010502,0.035015,-0.055604] },  
  { name: 'F', stack: 'II', data: [0,0.029755,-0.45174,-0.397836,-0.61,-0.56368,-0.593108,-0.462725,-0.351842,-0.210976] }, 
  { name: 'D', stack: 'II', data: [0,-0.098096,-0.170803,-0.688206,-0.92,-0.918492,-0.876488,-0.967249,-0.954217,-1.029596] },
  { name: 'C', stack: 'II', data: [0,-0.096543,-0.271997,-0.512372,-0.70,-0.665893,-0.723534,-0.879249,-0.890587,-0.821584] },
  { name: 'A', stack: 'II', data: [0,-0.212001,-0.409192,-0.559879,-0.81,-1.089119,-1.313719,-1.606092,-1.808868,-2.041628] }
]

The resulting chart matches up very neatly with its Excel progenitor:

You can find a revised fiddle here: http://jsfiddle.net/brightmatrix/fjhfxL83/

I hope this question and answer are helpful to someone out there!