area charts in excel 2008 - how to add x-axis labels?

[Ben]

Hi, I'm having a simple problem with area charts in excel 2008.

I have some simple data that I want to make into an area plot:
population on the y-axis, year on the x-axis.

In excel for windows (excel 2003), when I make this plot, I'm asked to
fill out the following fields: Name, Values, x-axis labels.
Everything's fine.

When I try and make the same plot in excel 2008 for mac, I can't add
my x-axis labels. I'm presented with a window that asks for: chart
data range, Name, Y values.

The result is that the x-axis just goes from 1-10 if I have 10 data
points instead of the year (which is what I want).

How do I actually enter my x-axis data? Am I overlooking something
here?

 

[JE McGimpsey]

How do I actually enter my x-axis data? Am I overlooking something
here?

Nope. It's a bug.

Workaround:

Create your chart first as an XY-scatter chart. Then switch to an Area
chart using the Chart Gallery.

 

[Guest]

If you hold down the command key and highlight the column that has the dates and then highlight the columns that have the date you want. That should work. Try it

 

[dharbes]

If you hold down the command key and highlight the column that has the dates and then highlight the columns that have the date you want. That should work. Try it

I'm having the same problem and i don't understand the solution from
the post so far. How can you add a label to your x-axis?

 

[JE McGimpsey]

I'm having the same problem and i don't understand the solution from
the post so far. How can you add a label to your x-axis?

One way:

Switch to an XY-Scatter chart and add the labels, Switch back to Area.

 

[JonM]

I cannot see any way to add axis label to any chart including xy scatter. In the old excel you did this via chart options but its greyed out?

 

[Bob Greenblatt]

I cannot see any way to add axis label to any chart including xy scatter. In
the old excel you did this via chart options but its greyed out?

You can add a text box to the plot area, or use the label tool from the
forms tool bar.

 

[carl.]

Well this is a bug, there is no reason you shouldn't be able to set the x-axis values in all chart types.

And sorry Bob, but creating a text box to assign x-axis values is just wrong.

 

[Bob Greenblatt]

Well this is a bug, there is no reason you shouldn't be able to set the x-axis
values in all chart types.

And sorry Bob, but creating a text box to assign x-axis values is just wrong.

Carl, You CAN add X axis labels. Just select the chart and go to the
formatting palette. Select chart options and then titles, and then chose X
Axis.

 

[jeanlucj]

Carl, You CAN add X axis labels. Just select the chart and go to the
formatting palette. Select chart options and then titles, and then chose X
Axis.

Bob,
Thanks for clearing up how to do this.
I do think it was a poor move (not to say stupid) on Microsoft's part
to get rid of the possibility of right-clicking on the chart and going
to chart options.
They could just have the right click open the formatting palette...

 

[JonM]

In case others are confused by Bobs unclear and slightly conflicting replies and the hopeless Office help.

To add axis labels you need the formatting palette, to get this you need to click on the button marked toolbox and on the window that opens you need to select the leftmost icon from the row of icons at the top.

Once you have the formatting palette click on your chart and then open the chart options section and there should be a drop down menu which initially says "Chart title". Click here to access and edit your axis labels.

 

[andres.kytt]

In case others are confused by Bobs unclear and slightly conflicting replies and the hopeless Office help.

To add axis labels you need the formatting palette, to get this you need to click on the button marked toolbox and on the window that opens you need to select the leftmost icon from the row of icons at the top.

Once you have the formatting palette click on your chart and then open thechart options section and there should be a drop down menu which initially says "Chart title". Click here to access and edit your axis labels.

Now you can add a text to that axis, but there's still no way to add
those dates Ben is looking for. Still waiting for an answer...

 

[andres.kytt]

In case others are confused by Bobs unclear and slightly conflicting replies and the hopeless Office help.

To add axis labels you need the formatting palette, to get this you need to click on the button marked toolbox and on the window that opens you need to select the leftmost icon from the row of icons at the top.

Once you have the formatting palette click on your chart and then open thechart options section and there should be a drop down menu which initially says "Chart title". Click here to access and edit your axis labels.

Actually found the solution at
http://www.mackb.com/Uwe/Forum.aspx...ta-as-labels-for-the-horizontal-category-axis.
Click on the data series you want to add labels for. A formula like
this "=SERIES(,,Sheet1!$Q$20:$Q$25,1)" should appear. Go between the
second and third comma and select the range with your labels. Thank
you, Microsoft!

 

[Lonne J Nesseler]

,
Ben wrote:

Nope. It's a bug.

Workaround:

Create your chart first as an XY-scatter chart. Then switch to an Area
chart using the Chart Gallery.[/QUOTE]

Yep, it *is* a bug. Fortunately, I can plot my data as a scatter chart. However, when I switch to line, which is what I have always used, the bug reappears in the X axis.

 

[Aurens]

While I'm at it, this is hardly a minor bug, and this release has been around for a while now. Trying to figure out how to make charts has been a headache for months. Is there a list of known bug somewhere? There should be!

 

[Carl Witthoft]

While I'm at it, this is hardly a minor bug, and this release has been around
for a while now. Trying to figure out how to make charts has been a headache
for months. Is there a list of known bug somewhere? There should be!

Well, some of us consider trying to use Excel to make charts a terrible
mistake in the first place :-( .

Trouble is, it takes some training to learn something good like GnuPlot.

 

[Carl Witthoft]

This worked, but didn't give me a quite the graph I wanted. It's been
a while since I made a graph in Excel, but my data for the x-axis is
units sold, and it's not always the same interval (the chart is break-
even data).

My Units Sold data goes 0, 10, 20, etc.. in intervals of ten, until
100, 120, 140, 160. This gives me a steeper curve after 100, which
I'm sure did not used to happen in earlier versions of Excel, as it
creates an awfully confusing graph.

The scale section of the x-axis format window doesn't offer any help
at all on making my graph look right.

-J

You need to select ScatterPlot as the chart type.

 

[jbcupsoe]

You need to select ScatterPlot as the chart type.

Here is the work-around I use. This appears to work for any chart type
but I figured it out while building a column chart.
In the spreadsheet Column A had numbers that I wanted to be the x axis
labels. Column B had the values I wanted for the bars in the chart.
Office 2008 tries to make these two data variables.

I thought Excel might make Column A into x axis labels if I changed
Column A category type (Format/Cells/Category) to Text instead of
General. That didn't work. Just for interest's sake I changed the
category to Date and surprisingly it did work. So, apparently if Excel
doesn't believe that there are numbers (for some reason numbers
formated as text are still numbers) in the column it will change them
to labels.

I changed Column A back to General because I didn't want dates but I
put a hard space (option-space) in the first and last cells of Column
A and Excel turned the entire Column A into x axis labels. All was
well except that the spacing of the labels for the first and last bar
on the chart were slightly off. So I put the non-printing text in a
cell above my first Column A number and also in a cell below the last
number. This solution produces a blank column at the begging and end
of the chart but at least the label spacing is correct.

I have not experimented with other characters to see if I can find
ones that convince Excel that this is text but don't change the
spacing. My experience is that I am putting in this amount of time to
build work-arounds in many many places in Office 2008.

 

[mark.w.andrews]

Here is the work-around I use. This appears to work for any chart type
but I figured it out while building a column chart.
In the spreadsheet Column A had numbers that I wanted to be the x axis
labels. Column B had the values I wanted for the bars in the chart.
Office 2008 tries to make these two data variables.

I thought Excel might make Column A into x axis labels if I changed
Column A category type (Format/Cells/Category) to Text instead of
General. That didn't work. Just for interest's sake I changed the
category to Date and surprisingly it did work. So, apparently if Excel
doesn't believe that there are numbers (for some reason numbers
formated as text are still numbers) in the column it will change them
to labels.

I changed Column A back to General because I didn't want dates but I
put a hard space (option-space) in the first and last cells of Column
A and Excel turned the entire Column A into x axis labels. All was
well except that the spacing of the labels for the first and last bar
on the chart were slightly off. So I put the non-printing text in a
cell above my first Column A number and also in a cell below the last
number. This solution produces a blank column at the begging and end
of the chart but at least the label spacing is correct.

I have not experimented with other characters to see if I can find
ones that convince Excel that this is text but don't change the
spacing. My experience is that I am putting in this amount of time to
build work-arounds in many many places in Office 2008.

I found it, it's in the Toolbox, if if you look at the Chart Options
drop down when the chart is selected. There is a Titles menu drop
down, select: Vertical (value) Axis for instance, and type in the
label below it that you want for your chart. It took me ages to find
it too...

Mark.