Y-Axis Displayed in Reverse Order

Question

Y-Axis Displayed in Reverse Order

Anonymous

Excel 2010

I have a lot of experience with Excel, but I am new to Excel 2010 and have run across an irritating issue that I've not been able to resolve. I have a chart that includes the following:

=SERIES("Employees",'Chart Tables'!$A$3:$A$16,'Chart Tables'!$C$3:$C$16,1)

A3:A16 is an alphabetical listing of employees and C3:C16 is the data being charted. I'm using a 3D bar chart. The data graphs correctly, but for some reason the Y-axis is in reverse alphabetical order. In other words, the Y-axis is the exact reverse order of A3:A16. So A3 contains "Baker" and A16 contains "Wright." I would then expect Baker to appear at the top of the Y-axis and Wright to appear at the bottom. What I get is exactly the opposite, with Wright at the top and Baker at the bottom.

I have found that I can go into the Axis Options and select the Categories in reverse order option, and that puts the Y-axis in the order that I want, but it also puts the X-axis at the top of the chart. Basically, it just flips the chart upside-down, which I don't want. Also, I can reverse the sort order of the source data and make the chart come out right that way, but it seems silly to me that I would need to do that to make this work the way that I want--with both the source data and the Y-axis in top-down alphabetical order.

So how can I keep the X-axis at the bottom of the chart and reverse the order of the Y-axis without changing the sort order of the source data?

Thanks for any help that you can provide.

--Tom

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Answer 1

Excel 2010

I have a lot of experience with Excel, but I am new to Excel 2010 and have run across an irritating issue that I've not been able to resolve. I have a chart that includes the following:

=SERIES("Employees",'Chart Tables'!$A$3:$A$16,'Chart Tables'!$C$3:$C$16,1)

A3:A16 is an alphabetical listing of employees and C3:C16 is the data being charted. I'm using a 3D bar chart. The data graphs correctly, but for some reason the Y-axis is in reverse alphabetical order. In other words, the Y-axis is the exact reverse order of A3:A16. So A3 contains "Baker" and A16 contains "Wright." I would then expect Baker to appear at the top of the Y-axis and Wright to appear at the bottom. What I get is exactly the opposite, with Wright at the top and Baker at the bottom.

I have found that I can go into the Axis Options and select the Categories in reverse order option, and that puts the Y-axis in the order that I want, but it also puts the X-axis at the top of the chart. Basically, it just flips the chart upside-down, which I don't want. Also, I can reverse the sort order of the source data and make the chart come out right that way, but it seems silly to me that I would need to do that to make this work the way that I want--with both the source data and the Y-axis in top-down alphabetical order.

So how can I keep the X-axis at the bottom of the chart and reverse the order of the Y-axis without changing the sort order of the source data?

Thanks for any help that you can provide.

--Tom

This is how to do in Excel 2007, maybe it works also in Excel 2010:

Under Format Axis -> Axis Options, i.e. where you selected Categories in reverse order, you also change theHorizontal axis crosses from Automatic to At maximum category . This will place the X-axis at the bottom (near Wright).

Hope this helps / Lars-Åke

Answer 2

This is how to do in Excel 2007, maybe it works also in Excel 2010:

Under Format Axis -> Axis Options, i.e. where you selected Categories in reverse order, you also change theHorizontal axis crosses from Automatic toAt maximum category . This will place the X-axis at the bottom (near Wright).

Hope this helps / Lars-Åke

Yep! That did the trick. It seems a bit counter intuitive to me, but I'll get on to it eventually. Thanks for the help!

--Tom

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Y-Axis Displayed in Reverse Order

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