Object and paragraph styles reference

When ChartStyler draws a chart, it creates a hierarchy of named styles in InDesign. You can edit these styles to control the appearance of every chart element. Styles are created once and never overwritten on subsequent redraws — only the properties listed as synced on every draw are updated automatically. Properties not listed as synced are set once, at creation, and are yours to edit afterward.

Paragraph styles and object styles are separate InDesign panels — each gets its own group of the same name, so “Chart Line 1” (an object style, in the Object Styles panel) and “Basic” (a paragraph style, in the Paragraph Styles panel) don’t sit in the same list even though both live under the same Style Group.

Style group structure

All styles are placed inside a style group named after the chart (or the value of Style Group in the Style tab):

Object Styles panel — [Style Group Name]/
  Chart Background
  Axis Lines
  All Chart Lines
  All Chart Markers
  All Chart Bars
  All Chart Areas
  Chart Line 1
  Chart Line 1 Legend
  Chart Line 2
  ...
  Chart Marker 1
  Chart Marker 1 (Key)       ← per cell-style override
  Chart Marker 2
  ...
  Chart Bar 1
  Chart Bar 1 (Key)          ← per cell-style override
  Chart Bar 2
  ...
  Chart Area 1
  Chart Area 2
  ...
  X-axis labels
  Y-axis labels
  Axis title                 ← shared by both the X and Y axis title text frames
  Legend [position] -Col / -Row

Paragraph Styles panel — [Style Group Name]/
  Basic
  X-axis labels
  Y-axis labels
  Legend left / center / right / justified
  Legend Title

Object styles

Chart Background

The full-bleed background rectangle behind the chart. Fill color is deliberately not stored on this style (it’s applied straight to the rectangle instead, from the Background Color setting) — nothing here is synced on every draw, so anything else you set (stroke, effects) is preserved.

Axis Lines

The X and Y axis border lines.

Synced on every draw: strokeColor, strokeWeight (only when a weight is actually specified; auto mode leaves your edited weight alone)

All Chart Lines

Base style for all series lines. Change stroke properties here to affect every line in the chart.

All Chart Markers

Base style for all series markers. Change fill or size here to affect all markers.

Synced on every draw: strokeColor (forced to None), strokeWeight (forced to 0)

All Chart Bars

Base style for all bar chart bars.

Synced on every draw: strokeColor (forced to None), strokeWeight (forced to 0)

All Chart Areas

Base style for all area chart fills.

Synced on every draw: strokeColor (forced to None), strokeWeight (forced to 0), opacity, blendMode (from the Area Opacity % setting) — editing these here has no persistent effect.

Chart Line N

Per-series line style, based on All Chart Lines.

Synced on every draw: strokeColor, strokeWeight (when Line Width is set; auto mode preserves your edits)

Chart Line N Legend

Per-series legend swatch line, based on Chart Line N. Kept separate so you can remove arrowheads or change weight for the legend independently of the chart line.

Synced on every draw: strokeColor, strokeWeight (same auto-mode caveat as Chart Line N)

Chart Marker N

Per-series marker style, based on All Chart Markers.

Synced on every draw: fillColor, strokeColor (forced to None), strokeWeight (forced to 0)

Chart Marker N (Key)

Per-point marker override, based on Chart Marker N. Created when a data point is tagged with the ChartStyler_Key cell style.

Synced on every draw: fillColor, strokeColor (forced to None), strokeWeight (forced to 0)
Everything else (effects, etc.) is yours to edit.

Chart Bar N

Per-series bar style, based on All Chart Bars.

Synced on every draw: fillColor
Stroke cleared at creation only — you can add a stroke in InDesign and it will be preserved.

Chart Bar N (Key)

Per-point bar override, based on Chart Bar N. Created when a data point is tagged with the ChartStyler_Key cell style.

Synced on every draw: fillColor
Stroke cleared at creation only, same as Chart Bar N.

Chart Area N

Per-series area fill style, based on All Chart Areas.

Synced on every draw: fillColor, opacity, blendMode
Stroke cleared at creation only.

X-axis labels / Y-axis labels / Axis title

Frame-level styles for the tick labels and axis titles (fill/stroke set to None, auto-sizing behavior). Nothing on these is synced after creation.

Legend [position] -Col / -Row

Legend text frame, one per legend position and orientation actually in use (-Col for a vertical stack, -Row for a horizontal run). Nothing on these is synced after creation.

Paragraph styles

All paragraph styles are placed in the same style group as the object styles, in the separate Paragraph Styles panel.

Style	Used for
`Basic`	Root style; all other text styles inherit from it via `basedOn`. Change the font here to update all chart text — except axis titles, see note below.
`X-axis labels`	Tick labels along the X axis
`Y-axis labels`	Tick labels along the Y axis
`Legend left` / `center` / `right` / `justified`	Legend item text — whichever alignment the legend actually uses
`Legend Title`	Legend title text

Tip: Edit Basic to change the typeface for most chart text in one step. Individual styles inherit from Basic via InDesign’s basedOn chain.

Note — Axis titles have no paragraph style. Unlike the other text elements, the X-axis and Y-axis title text frames are not assigned any paragraph style — only the Axis title object style above applies to them. Their font comes from InDesign’s own default text formatting, not from Basic. If you need to change their typeface, select the text and apply a font directly, or apply Basic to it by hand.

Note — the live preview reads these back. Basic, X-axis labels, and Y-axis labels are the only styles ChartStyler ever reads properties from (font and size) rather than just writes to — it uses them to keep the chart preview panel’s fonts matching what you’ve set in InDesign. Every other style is write-only from the plugin’s side.

Using a Parent Style Group

See Design — Style for how to route all paragraph style inheritance through a shared parent group, making it easy to apply a single typography system across multiple charts.