Graphing in Excel

November 17, 2001 - by Bill Jelen

Cathy writes:

I created a column chart in Excel. There are 5 data points, and the text is appearing along the x-axis for columns 1, 3 and 5, but it is missing for columns 2 and 4. I checked the worksheet, and the text is appearing in the table. Why isn't it appearing in the chart?

If you create a chart in a worksheet, you may find that Excel sets this option by default. You may find that you don't like some of the chart options set by Excel. The great news is that everything in a chart is customizable. All of those settings are just a right-click away.

In this case, go to the X axis and right click the words for the first data point. From the pop-up menu, select Format axis. There are five tabs across the Format Axis dialog. This particular setting is on the Scale tab. On the Scale tab, change the value for "Number of Categories between Tick Mark Labels from 2 to 1.