Horizontal error bars in scatter plot

Why is there not just another tab for horizontal error bars next to where you format your vertical error bars?? It makes no sense

This made me laugh (not necessarily in a way that would be kind to Microsoft and its programmers) because it used to be (in the 2002/2003 era) that the tabs for formatting error bars were tabs side by side in the format series dialog. For some reason, MS decide with 2007 that it was "better" to do it this way.

I'm not exactly sure how this is supposed to work in 2013. In 2007, I can easily format both the vertical and horizontal error bars in the same method. If I select the vertical error bars (most reliable might be to use the chart element dropdown in the chart tools format tab) and select Format selection, I can change the vertical error bars as needed. The same thing applies to the horizontal error bars (Chart tools -> format -> Select horizontal error bars from chart element drop down -> Format selection). I am sorry that I cannot state for certain how the 2013 commands are organized, but I thought they were similar.

Are you certain you have a scatter chart and not a line chart? I note that I cannot add horizontal error bars to a line chart.

Does that help any?

The devil is in the details. Exactly how are you trying to access the "format horizontal error bars" dialog? I note that, if I pull up the "more error bar options" during error bar creation, that it only pulls up the vertical error bar formatting dialog. I would guess this behavior is because other chart types only have vertical error bars. It sounds like you are trying to add and format the error bars both at the point of creating the error bars. Since "upgrading" to 2007, I add the error bars, then formatted the error bars as two separate steps. I do not know how to access the format horizontal error bar dialog as part of the create/add error bars command so that you can format them at the same time as you create them.