The problem here isn't your chart. It's the assumption that a legend has to be a fixed, uncooperative box that fights you every time you try to make it fit. You've got an assignment due, you're wrestling with Excel, and the legend is eating your text the moment you adjust the font size. That's not a personal failure. That's a tool that's making you do the work twice, and it's exactly the kind of friction that turns a simple task into a frustrating standoff.
Here's what's actually happening: Excel treats the legend as a single object, but it doesn't give you a direct handle to resize the box the way you would a chart or an axis. So you reach for the only control that seems to respond, the font size, and suddenly your labels are getting clipped. That's not you doing something wrong. That's the software forcing you to choose between readability and completeness, which is a false choice. The real fix isn't to keep shrinking text until it fits. It's to step back and ask what the legend is for in the first place: to identify data clearly, not to become the visual centerpiece of your graph.
What you're experiencing is a common trap, and the way out is to stop fighting the legend box and start working with how Excel actually handles chart elements. In most cases, you can click directly on the legend, then use the format options to adjust its position, or better yet, you can simplify the legend itself. If your series names are long, shorten them in the source data. If you have too many categories, consider whether all of them need to be in the legend at all. Sometimes the most direct solution is to remove the legend entirely and label your data points directly on the chart. That's not a workaround. That's a design decision that often makes the graph clearer, not less.
The bigger lesson here is that tools like Excel are meant to serve the story you're telling with your data, not the other way around. When you hit a wall like this, the instinct isn't to abandon the task or settle for a chart that looks broken. It's to recognize that the constraint is artificial, and there's usually a more straightforward path forward. You don't need a bigger legend box. You need a legend that takes up less space and still does its job. So try dragging it to the side, resizing the plot area, or moving the legend to the top or bottom where horizontal space isn't as tight. And if the text still clips, check whether your series names have extra spaces or line breaks that are inflating the box. Clean those up, and you'll often find the legend shrinks to match its content.
You're not stuck. You're just at the point where the default settings stop being helpful, and that's when you start making choices instead of accepting what the software gives you. Take control of the layout, simplify the labels, and if the legend still won't behave, drop it. A clear chart with direct labels beats a cluttered one with a perfect legend every time. Your assignment will be better for it, and you'll have learned something more useful than how to fight a dialog box.