

EXCEL GRAPH AXIS LABEL TEXT HOW TO
See Text Labels on a Vertical Column Chart in Excel to see how to get the text labels onto the vertical axis of a column chart.Returns an object that represents either a single axis or a collection of the axes on the chart. I noted before that the error bar cap is not obscured in Excel 2003, and here’s proof. In the Excel 2003 Format Axis dialog, uncheck the “Value Axis Crosses Between Categories” checkbox.įinally we have our chart with text labels along the survey response (horizontal) axis. The Rating labels are not properly aligned, but this is easy to fix.įormat the horizontal axis, and in Excel 2007 change the Position Axis setting of the vertical axis from “Between Tick Marks” to “On Tick Marks”. Hide the top and right axes by selecting “None” for axis tick marks and tick labels, and “No Line” for the axis line itself.
EXCEL GRAPH AXIS LABEL TEXT SERIES
Hide the dummy series by setting its fill color to no fill. Change the setting for each vertical axis. In the Excel 2003 Format Axis dialog, the maximum category checkbox checked for the right axis and unchecked for the left axis. Switch the settings of the left and right axes. In the Excel 2007 Format Axis dialog, the left axis will be set so the horizontal axis crosses at the automatic setting, and the right axis so the horizontal axis crosses at the maximum category. In turn, select the left and right vertical axes. We want the Rating labels at the bottom of the chart, and we’ll place the numerical axis at the top before we hide it. On the Excel 2007 Chart Tools > Layout tab, click Axes, then Secondary Horizontal Axis, then Show Left to Right Axis. Excel 2007 has no Ratings labels or secondary horizontal axis, so we have to add the axis by hand. In Excel 2003 the chart has a Ratings labels at the top of the chart, because it has secondary horizontal axis. Right click on the new series, choose “Change Chart Type” (“Chart Type” in 2003), and select the clustered column style. We now have two sets of bars in the chart. I chose the Dummy values of 2 just so the data would show up in the chart.Ĭopy this table above, select the chart, and use Paste Special to add the data to the chart using the settings below (the Excel 2007 dialog is very much like this Excel 2003 dialog). Rating 1 may stand for “Totally Lame” and Rating 5 for “Totally Awesome”. In our chart, fixing the scale at 1 to 5 makes sense.

However, the minimum possible score here is 1, and we’ll be using text labels. Note that I’ve violated the first rule of bar chart value axis scales, which is that The Axis Scale Must Include Zero. So far so good, except that the end cap of the Question 3 upper error bar is apparently hidden by the plot area border (it appears properly in 2003). Plot the responses for each question (the first two columns of the data) in a clustered bar chart, and use the Error column as custom error bar values. I’ve sorted the list in reverse order to work around the phenomenon described in Why Are My Excel Bar Chart Categories Backwards? Let’s assume the following dummy survey results. I’ll show the charts from Excel 2007, and the different dialogs for both where applicable. The steps are essentially the same in Excel 2007 and in Excel 2003.

In this tutorial I’ll show how to use a combination bar-column chart, in which the bars show the survey results and the columns provide the text labels for the horizontal axis. There are several ways to accomplish this task. The data can be plotted by value, but it’s not obvious how to place the text labels on the chart in place of the numerical labels on the horizontal axis. This may be a scale of 1 to 5 where 1 means “Completely Dissatisfied” and 5 means “Completely Satisfied”, with other labels in between. When analyzing survey results, for example, there may be a numerical scale that has associated text labels.
