Changing chart axis labels

I suspect you are requiring a scatter chart for this (mass spec?) data rather than a bar chart. Right click and select chart type.

Hello

with a column chart like this, the X axis is a category axis, which means that its values are treated as text, even if they are numbers. You can format the X axis to show only every 20th label, but since the data is not that regular, that won't help.

But you can create the desired labels in a separate column and apply them to the chart. Open the chart's Select Data dialog and in the right hand pane click the Edit button to edit the source for the X axis (Category) labels. Select the manually created column and hit OK.

See attached.

You could try the scatter chart approach by inserting extra points on the X axis before and after each of the real data points.

e.g.

m/z Absolute Intensity
40 0
40 7495
40 0
41.05 0
41.05 317943
41.05 0
42.05 0
42.05 17088
42.05 0
43.05 0
43.05 202497
43.05 0


The macro below will do the inserts if you have the m/z header in A1. You may need to make the lines on the chart very thin to be able to see the detail.

Please Login or Register  to view this content.

Open up the VBA editor by hitting ALT F11

Insert a new module by hitting Insert - Module

Paste the macro into the empty sheet

Hit ALT F11 to get back to the worksheet.

Run the macro by going to tools-macro in Excel 2003 or the view ribbon in Excel 2007/2010.

What if you use xy-scatter with error bars?

Please see attached for an example with the extra 0 values.

Change chart to xy-scatter
Select series and add Error bars.
Delete X error bars
Format Y error bars to Minus 100% no cap.
Format X axis, Min=40,Major=20

I guess you have not selected the error bars when you delete.

Use the Element selection dropdown on the Format tab to select X Error bars, then delete