Hi, I'm Dawn. In this Quick Tip,
we'll look at how to standardize and customize the vertical axis in an Excel
chart. By default, whenever you create a chart,
Excel determines the minimum and maximum scale values of the vertical or value
axis, also known as the Y-axis. However,
you can customize the scale to better meet your needs. For instance,
if you have two similar charts in a worksheet like these,
you may want to change the scale so that the vertical axis is consistent in both
charts for more accurate comparisons.
Or it may be more helpful to change the units of the scale.
Let's look at the easy steps to do this. First,
I want to select my Y or vertical axis. Now there are a couple ways to do that.
I could just click into the chart and select this way.
You may find it easier to go to the Format ribbon tab
and then actually pick the axis in the left-hand side for the current
selection. Once this is selected,
right-click and choose Format Axis.
Let's explore then these options. So these two charts are consistent,
I'm going to set a maximum value for both of them of 15,000.
And I'd like to have a major unit instead of 2,000 of 2,500.
I'm also going to change this (Minimum), if necessary, back to zero.
So these are the same steps that I would apply to the next chart as well.
Explore some of the other options in terms of how you would like to modify
this scale. So now I've changed the scale for both of these vertical axes.
And here's a little bonus tip because I want these to be really comparable.
I'm also going to just quickly change the size.
So I'll click into the chart area of the first one. In the Format ribbon tab,
over on the right-hand side, here's my size.
So let's make that 3 inches by 5.5 and I'll do the same with
the second chart. Now I'll hold SHIFT,
click on the other chart so they're both selected.
And then in Shape Format, I'll choose Aligh
and Align Top.
So now both of these charts have the same Y-axis,
the same scale and the same size that makes it much easier to
compare these two different years. Now here's a little different situation.
This data is shown in millions and to display that one way would be to
enter in the numbers so that they are representing millions,
such as in this example.
And so a label was added to the axis to show that this is in millions,
but here's another switch to that.
It's more likely you would have the data in millions, billions,
whatever increment that might be,
and it can get a little crowded and maybe a little bit confusing in
this manner. So how do we handle it? That is also possible in a similar way.
Now, first of all,
I'll take off this label because it no longer would apply here.
We'll see that there's another way to handle that. And then we'll select the,
axis, right-click and here's Format Axis.
So rather than showing the actual numbers in millions,
what we're going to do here is change the Display units so that they can
display in whatever increment is helpful to you. So for this one,
it will be millions. Then simply enable, if necessary,
Show display units label on chart.
And that will give you a cleaner presentation of the same data.
As before, we also could adjust our maximum values,
as well as the units that we want to display. Explore other options.
For instance, do you wanna see tick marks?
And those are these little subtle lines that could be inside or outside for
those particular points. How do you wanna handle labels or numbers?
Explore these options to standardize and customize the vertical axis in a chart
to give you more accurate results.
For more tips on being productive with Microsoft Excel or to sign up for my tips
newsletter, visit TheSoftwarePro.com/Excel. If this Quick Tip was helpful,
please like this video and subscribe to this channel. This is Dawn Bjork,
TheSoftwarePro. Thanks for watching.