Can you link primary and secondary axis zero, scaling?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Guest
  • Start date Start date
G

Guest

For ease of reading, I would like to link zero points and make the tick mark
distances the same for both primary and secondary axes (with different
scaling, though). Is there a way to do this besides setting the scaling
manually?
 
There's no built in way offered by Excel for this. It could be done
programmatically.

- Jon
-------
Jon Peltier, Microsoft Excel MVP
Peltier Technical Services
Tutorials and Custom Solutions
http://PeltierTech.com/
_______
 
Hi Carol:
I am not sure whether I understand your question correctly (English is not
my native language): do you want to set the tick marks "in line" or do you
want to automate it / instruct Excel to do it automatically?
If you *just* want to get the tick mark distances lined up then I believe
you can set this manually. Do you want it for the category or for the value
axis? It may not work equally well for all type of charts, and also the
relation between the two axes must have some fixed linear factor.
Additionally, you need to set the secondary axis with their min/max values
equal to their corresponding figures on the first axis, and this need to be
manually corrected if your data changes. E.g., for an XY chart I use it for
instance to show two category axes, one in Celsius and the other in Kelvin
grads. Also, I apply this principle to show actual figure values on one axis
and corresponding percentages on the secondary y-axis. The tick mark
distances can be "matched", i.e. you can use shared gridlines by choosing
appropriate values for "Major Unit" relative to "Maximum" of the scale (in
Format Axis / Scale) for both axes. "Appropriate" usually will be the same
percentage-wise value for both axes.
I hope this is what you are looking for. Feel free to mail me a concrete
example with details on chart type, which axes/values, etc if this is answer
is too cryptic.
GL,
Henk
 
Henk,

Thanks for the reply.

I am aware of the manual settings, and have used them in the past. I was
wondering if there was an automated way to apply the settings so that things
would come out right when distributed to a larger group of users that have
slightly different data to present. It sounds from another reply like there
is no built-in function in Excel to accomplish this, but that programming may
be possible.


Regards,
Carol
 
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