Forum Discussion
Cannot Adjust X-Axis Range
I have been having this issue since I started making plots in excel. When using any plot other than a scatter plot, I cannot adjust the X-axis range. I've searched the web for a solution countless times, and all that I have learned is that people have been having this problem since before 2016. I'm hoping I can at least figure out what is happening behind the scenes, because I cannot imagine why anyone would design a plotting tool without the ability to manually adjust the range of plots. It must be possible...
Here, I am using a combo plot. The blue area-chart is used to show a number of frequency bands. This is just a visual guide so that a viewer knows which parts of the line-chart contain interesting data. What I want to do is adjust the X-axis range to eliminate the white space to the left of the data. When I use the "axis options" tab to try to format the X-Axis, there is no option to adjust the range. All it says is that excel has already made all of these decisions for me.
All of the data is numerical. All of the cells are formatted as numbers. So why can't I change the x-axis range of this plot?
In this same plot, I can adjust the y-axis range just fine. Here is what that looks like.
3 Replies
ScubaSam You must have included a range of X-axis labels without values. Like in the attached picture. Just eliminate the area with no data.
Riny_van_Eekelen Thank you. That works, and answers the question - how to change the range. What of the other parameters that I have no control over in this case? Major and minor gridlines(units) for example?
I often make adjustments to plots mid-presentation; changing scales and data ranges to get a closer look at different ranges data. For example, if I copy-paste the same exact data into a scatter plot, then I have full control over the range/units of both the X and Y axes by simply using the "format axis" window. Using this other method, all data above or below a certain range is completely excluded from the plot, and I would need to make many copies of the same plot to accomplish this.
There must be a work-around for this automatic range "feature".
So I ran into this issue when I did "change chart type" trying to add a secondary axis under the "combo" chart type. When you select or change the chart type, you'll see it do something with the x axis, simply I just selected a chart type where it it let me use normal number ranges.
