how to get axes labels on excel for a mac

The overarching message here is to try to encode all of your data, even for labels. As an example, I moved the labels to the 8th position in the image below by moving the data values. You can now easily modify the location of the data labels by changing the data. In this case, we want to use the name of the series, so you have to go into the Format Data Labels menu and deselect Value and select Series name.Īfter formatting each label, you can delete the legend and style the gridlines, tick marks, etc. Note that the default data label is the value of the data point. You can now create the chart with all 12 series (six original plus six for the labels), select each series, add the data label, and then format the label. If you plot these data and add data labels to each line, you’re going to have a complete mess.īut, adding another set of series with only a single data point–the location at which you want to place your label–you’ll only have one label and it will go exactly where you want it. In it, we have six series with ten observations each. Instead of adding text boxes–which I find will never go exactly where I want them and can sometimes get lost as I copy and paste from Excel into another program like PowerPoint–add additional data to your chart and use data labels for those extra series. Let me offer two alternative ways to directly label your chart. In Method #2, she inserted text boxes in the graphic this approach would work in just about any version of Excel. Method #1 used the new labeling feature in Excel 2013. Stephanie’s showed two ways to directly label a line chart in Excel. Once you’ve had some success on that front, you can push forward to directly annotating your visualizations providing explanations, labels, and additional content.īut I digress. For most of us, the easiest way to do this is to integrate our text and graphics and directly label our visualizations. Stephanie’s post is consistent with a general strategy I use and refer to as “integrating text and graphics.” The idea is to create more effective visualizations by merging explanatory text and the visualization itself. In it, she offered some guidance about how to get rid of your default legends and directly label your charts in Excel. My friend Stephanie Evergreen–who co-hosts the awesome Rad Presenters Podcast with me–published a post last week about labeling charts in Excel.

How to get axes labels on excel for a mac