point outside of a graph

[Guest]

I am working on a line chart and I need to specify a specific range for the y
axis, but was wondering if it possible to plot the one outlier datapoint
outside of the excel chart?

 

[Jon Peltier]

Where would you put it?

Seriously, it used to be possible to plot points beyond the axis scale
limits, but Microsoft "fixed" this in Excel 2002. Actually, the point
wouldn't appear, but you could still position a label outside the axes
this way.

- Jon
-------
Jon Peltier, Microsoft Excel MVP
Peltier Technical Services
Tutorials and Custom Solutions
http://PeltierTech.com/
_______

 

[Guest]

Hi Jon,

Thanks for the help. As for where I would put it-I am working on an
assignment and the directions are to keep the scales on all of the y axes the
same across charts to make it easy to read, but there is one outlier on one
table that would make the scale much higher than necessary for all of the
other charts and I was trying to figure out if I could plot this point
outside the chart allowing me to have a more reasonable y scale axis, but you
indicated that this is no longer possible.

Thanks

 

[Jon Peltier]

Well, the point wouldn't have appeared anyway.

Is it worth trying to draw a broken axis, or plotting the one point by
itself in a series on the secondary axes? Or merely proViding a note
next to the chart describing the outlier?

- Jon
-------
Jon Peltier, Microsoft Excel MVP
Peltier Technical Services
Tutorials and Custom Solutions
http://PeltierTech.com/
_______

 

[Tushar Mehta]

One of the tricks I've used to do something like this works well if you
use a chart with connecting lines (either a line chart or a xy scatter
chart). Plot all the points and force the y-max to be whatever you
want. XL will draw a line from the previous point to the top plot
boundary and another line from the boundary to the next point. The two
lines would intersect where the outlier should be.

Depending on the purpose of the chart this technique can be very
effective to show the existence of outliers while still excluding them
from the chart.

--
Regards,

Tushar Mehta
www.tushar-mehta.com
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