Changing X-Axis Labelling

[Guest]

I have a client who has a PPT chart with the following data:

- Monthly data entries from Jan. 2000 to the present
- Major x-axis scale of one year, because there isn't room to have a x-label
for every month. This means the x-axis reads from left to right Jan-00,
Jan-01, etc.
- The latest entry, April of 05 is at the far right. It does not have a
x-axis label. Because of the high number of data entries, it is impossible
to tell, on visual inspection of the chart, what the last month is.

He's looking for a way to get a x-label for the latest month entry.
According to client: "Manually drawing a text box to sit on top of the chart
is too cumbersome and will not appear uniform with the other x-axis labels.
Additionally, just adding a label in the last spot would create a problem in
Nov-March, as these labels will not have enough room next to the January
label. If I lop off the first three months, the chart x-labels will all say
"Apr", but I don't want to get rid of this data. Ideal would be a way to get
the labels to start at April-05 and go backwards (i.e. a twelve-month
frequency pegged to the last data entry, not the first)."

To clarify, he does NOT want to choose Categories in reverse order. He
wants the chart to start on the left with the data, but start on the right
with the labels.

Any ideas?

 

[Guest]

Two suggestions that might work:
1. display all x-axis lables, then go in and delete the unwanted ones
one-by-one. This would be time consuming if there are a lot of labels though.
2. you gave me an idea when you discussed choosing categories in reverse
order. If he organized his data in the spreadsheet in reverse order,
starting with April '05, then chose to display the data in reverse order as
you discussed (essentially a double reverse), he could then select a
frequency of every 12 for the labels. I'm thinking this would create a chart
that would start with the April 05 label and work backwards AND present his
earliest data point first.

 

[Guest]

Thanks for suggestion #2, it was very creative but it didn't work. He said
PowerPoint still labelled from the left.

Any other ideas?

Thanks in advance for your help!

 

[Andy Pope]

Hi,

You could use the data labels of an extra data series to mimic the x
axis. See example
http://www.andypope.info/ngs/ng41.htm

Cheers
Andy