Sometimes your data type may require a second axis. The sample data that we took for this tutorial pertains to the average temperature andrainfall in London across the 12 calendar months of a year.
Figure 1 below shows a chart that depicts this data from January toDecember. The temperature is depicted in Celsius and the rainfall is in millimeters. What you should note carefully is that the value range oftemperature spans between 30 and 70, whereas the range for rainfall is in between 0 to 12 (approximately). A chart that results from this datadoesn't live up to the comparison since we are trying to compare items that are from different data ranges.Figure 1: Chart with two Data SeriesTo help your audience comprehend this data better, you could create two charts. But that's an overkill since there's a better, more elegantsolution. You should span this data on two Value axes within the same chart: one for the temperature and the other for the rainfall. In thistutorial, you are going to learn how to add a Secondary Value axis to your charts into overcome this kind of problem.
You can also change the chart type for one series (for example, make it a line graph instead of a bar graph). With the series selected, click the Design tab, go to the.
Tip: To learn more about axes, refer to our tutorial.Follow these steps to get started:. Open your presentation and navigate to the slide that contains your chart. Within the chart,to which you want to add asecond Value axis. Right-click this series to access the contextual menu, as shown Figure 2. From this contextual menu,choose the Format Data Series option (refer to Figure 2 again).Figure 2: Format Data Series option selected. This opens the Format Data Series, as shown in Figure 3. Makesure that the Series Options button is selected as shown highlighted in red withinFigure 3.
Then, select the Series Options (highlighted in blue withinFigure 3) within the Format Data Series Task Pane. Thereafter, select the Secondary Axis radiobutton (highlighted in green within Figure 3).Figure 3: Secondary axis radio button selected for one of the series. This adds a secondary Value axis that maps your selected series, as shown in Figure 4. Note that theon both the Value axes show different numberedranges, while the Primary Value axis displaysbetween 0 and 14, theSecondary Value axis spans a completely different range between 0 and 80.Figure 4: Secondary Value Axis addedWe might have solved the problem of comprehending the actual values better now, but we have a new problem to solve!
As you can see inFigure 4 above, the Data Series are overlapping each other. Columns depicting rainfall are completely hiding most of thecolumns representing the Average temperature.
To solve this problem, you need to change the chart type of any one of the Series. Select the Series that you want to change the type of, andright-click to access the contextual menu, as shown Figure 5. From the contextual menu, choose theChange Series Chart Type option (refer to Figure 5 again).Figure 5: Change the Chart Type of selected Series.
This brings up the Change Chart Type dialog box as shown in Figure 6. Select the Combo optionas shown highlighted in red within Figure 6 and then click on theClustered Column - Line on Secondary Axis variant type (highlighted in blue withinFigure 6). Click the OK button.Figure 6: Change Chart Type dialog box. This changes the selected Series to the new chart type. In Figure 7 you can see that the Series representing the rainfall haschanged to a Line.Figure 7: Chart type changed. Your chart at this stage needs little more modification since there are no markers visible on the point to represent the value.
To make themarker visible right-click the Data Series represented by line, and from the contextual menu select the Format Data Series option.Figure 8: Format Data Series option selected. This opens the Format Data Series, as shown in Figure 9. Makesure that the Fill & Line button is selected as shown highlighted in red withinFigure 9. Then, select the Marker tab (highlighted in blue withinFigure 9) in the Format Data Series Task Pane. Thereafter, select Marker Options (highlighted ingreen within Figure 9).Figure 9: Marker options within the Format Data Series Task Pane.
This reveals various options to format the Marker as shown in Figure 10. Select the Built-in radio button(highlighted in red within Figure 10). Then click the down-arrow provided with theType option (highlighted in blue within Figure 10) to open theType drop-down menu that contains various Marker types, as shown in Figure 10. Click on the Marker typeof your choice.Figure 10: Marker type selected. You can also change the size of the marker.
In Figure 11 you can see that we have set the Size value to 10.Figure 11: Marker size set to 10. Then, optionally change the color of the Marker to make it stand apart on the line. To do that, select the Fill option(highlighted in red within Figure 12) within the Marker tab and click theColor button (highlighted in blue within Figure 12) to open the Colordrop-down gallery that contains various color palettes, as shown in Figure 12. Click on the color palette of your choice. Theoptions within the Color drop-down gallery are explained further in ourtutorial. Even though the tutorial is specific to Plot Area, they pertain to Markers as well, refer to Step 4within that tutorial.Figure 12: Select a color for the Marker.
This adds Markers to the Line representing the Secondary Axis data values, as shown in Figure 13.Figure 13: Markers added to the Line representing the Secondary Axis data valuesCreating a combination chart of this type with two series makes your data appear so much better, and it also ends up being so much easier on the eyefor your audience. You cannot compare apples and oranges, but they can still coexist!.
If you try to analyze the chart shown in Figure 13 above, you will realize that there's no easy way to identify if aparticular series uses the Primary axis or the Secondary axis. With just two series, this is an easyproblem to solve, we just changed the text fill color of both the axes labels to match the color of the respective series and markerpoints, as shown in Figure 14 (compare Figures 13 and 14).Figure 14: Font color changed for the Secondary Axis labels. Save your presentation.See Also.
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