Excel 2010 Bible

Part III: Creating Charts and Graphics

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Excel lets you position the axis labels at three different locations: Next to Axis, High, and Low.

Each axis extends from –10 to +10. When you combine these settings with the Axis Crosses At

option, you have a great deal of flexibility, as shown in Figure 19.13.

FIGURE 19.13

Various ways to display axis labels and crossing points.

Category axis

Figure 19.14 shows the Axis Options tab of the Format Axis dialog box when a category axis is

selected. Some options are the same as those for a value axis.

Excel chooses how to display category labels, but you can override its choice. Figure 19.15 shows

a column chart with month labels. Because of the lengthy category labels, Excel displays the text at

an angle. If you make the chart wider, the labels will then appear horizontally. You can also adjust

the labels from the Alignment tab of the Format Axis dialog box.

In some cases, you really don’t need every category label. You can adjust the Interval between

Labels settings to skip some labels (and cause the text to display horizontally). Figure 19.16 shows

such a chart; the Interval between Labels setting is 3.