Modifying charts : Modifying charts in Interactive Viewer : Formatting the chart : Formatting the x and y axes of a chart

Formatting the x and y axes of a chart

You can use Interactive Viewer to modify the titles of the x and y axes of a chart, and the axis labels. You can also delete axis titles, and suppress labels.

Changing the axis titles

Charts other than pie charts and meter charts can have x-axis and y-axis titles. To add and format an axis title, navigate to Format Chart. You can hide the title of an axis, or modify an existing title. On Format Chart, navigate to either the x-axis or y-axis section, and type a title in the Title field. Then modify the font properties by choosing Select Font.

Changing the axis labels of a chart

A chart displays axis labels by default, to the left of the vertical axis, and below a horizontal axis. Using Interactive Viewer, you can specify whether to hide or display labels, and modify the position and appearance of labels so that they are easier to read. For example, you can show the labels on the y-axis to the right of the axis rather than the left. You can also rotate or stagger the labels on the x-axis so that they are easier to fit on the chart and read.

Sometimes a chart displays so many values on an axis that the label text overlaps and is not legible. You can rotate the labels at an angle relative to the axis or stagger the labels, so that they do not overlap, as shown in Figure 7-22. For example, you can show data points for every third month, every ten days, every other year, and so on. To change the label properties, navigate to Format Chart and specify the values in the Category (X) axis title area.

Figure 7-21  Formatting the axes

How to modify the axis labels of a chart

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To hide labels, deselect the Show Labels box on Format Chart. If label names are too long, or if the chart looks too crowded when you display all the labels, you can use Interactive Viewer to specify which labels to skip so that only the other labels appear on the chart.
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To skip labels, set the Interval value at which labels should appear. For example, to show every other label, use an Interval value of 2. To show every fifth label, use an Interval value of 5, and so on. You can also modify the font properties for labels by choosing Select Font.

The following example in Figure 7-22 shows a chart on the left with staggered labels, and one on the right with rotated labels.

Figure 7-22  Staggered labels and rotated labels

Modifying scale

You can modify the scale of the value axis using Interactive Viewer to fit the data that the axis displays. Category axes do not support scale changes. The scale determines the range of values on a linear, logarithmic, or date-and-time axis. You can use the axis scale to change the following settings:

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To set the scale of the y-axis, navigate to Format Chart and specify values for minimum, maximum, and step in the Value (Y) axis title area. The chart on the left in Figure 7-22 has a scale set between 0 and 240000 and a step value of 40000.