Part III: Creating Charts and Other Visualizations
Modifying the category axis
Figure 21.15 shows part of the Axis Options section of the Format Axis task pane when a
category axis is selected. Some options are the same as those for a value axis.
FIGURE 21.15
Some of the options available for a category axis
An important setting is Axis Type: Text or Date. When you create a chart, Excel recognizes
whether your category axis contains date or time values. If it does, it uses a Date category
axis. Figure 21.16 shows a simple example. Column A contains dates, and column B contains
the values plotted in the column chart. The data consists of values for only 10 dates, yet
Excel created the chart with 30 intervals on the category axis. It recognized that the cat-
egory axis values were dates and created an equal-interval scale.
You can override Excel’s decision to use a Date category axis by choosing the Text Axis
option for Axis Type. Figure 21.17 shows the chart after making this change. In this case,
using a time-based category axis (as shown in Figure 21.16) presents a much truer picture
of the data.
