Strange chart problem - Y axis scaling

**shiv379** · 09-21-2009, 11:44 AM

Hi all!

Ok I'm generally pretty good with excel but this one has me stumped! I have two charts each with two series. The lowest datapoint on the first chart is 280, and on the second it's 353. The strange thing is, altho they are both set to fully automatic scaling of the Y axis the first graph looks right and the axis crosses at 250, the second graph crosses at 0!

I've attached a sample spreadsheet to show what I mean. Does anyone know why this might be happening and if there's a way to have the min value on the Y axis of the second graph cross at a more sensible place without having to set the options manually?

~Shiv
(Excel 2003 SP2)

**teylyn** · 09-21-2009, 05:39 PM

Hi

it's weird, but it's the data. I've played around with the numbers a bit and found that it has to do with the difference between the highest and the lowest data points in the whole table.

The chart with the axis that automatically starts at 250 has a difference of 53.xxx between its max and min numbers.

the other chart has a difference of 78.xxx

As soon as you change the numbers and the difference between max and min gets to around 70, the chart's Y axis autoscale will change.

I guess it has to do with some algorithm that Excel uses to determine for the axis max and min values and the numbers in between.

Looks like you need to use the manual settings, cause Excel thinks that this is the prettiest depiction of your data. (Yeah, right!)

Strange chart problem - Y axis scaling

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