Forum Discussion
How Do I Insert a Break in the Y Axis in Microsoft Excel?
Greetings, I have a data set that I am wanting to represent in Microsoft Excel in a column chart. There are two data series. One series has small numbers (1,1,1,1), and the other series has a ran...
A break in the Y axis would distort your chart and make it impossible to compare relative sizes by just looking at the height of the bars, which is what a bar chart is designed to enable the viewer of your chart to do. You could consider setting the Y-axis to use a log scale perhaps. But I have no insight in the nature of your data and how both series relate to one another.
Jan,
Thanks for the response. I understand that the break in the Y axis would change how the graph looks, but I would employ other graph elements (Y axis numbers, data points for each column, error bars, significance markers, etc) to help the viewer understand what the graph is representing. The data I have is two groups of 4 numbers. The specific numbers are listed in my original post, and they represent relative gene expression of specific genes from a control and treatment sample (hence the relation of the two groups) expressed as fold change. The idea of a log scale is interesting, thank you. I hope this helps. Take care.
Steven
- Well, in short: No, Excel cannot do that. But there are probably ways to fake it using an additional chart series and a secondary chart axis anyway.