microsoft excel for mac flip x and y axis

The basic mechanism of the colored regions on the chart is to use Excel’s “area chart” to create rectangular areas.

Customize the color, label, and order of the data series.

Select and adjust the x axis labels and ticks.

Change the “years… in decline” series to an area chart.

We’ll make several changes to improve this: When we select the six columns above and insert a line chart, we get a rather ugly line chart. Transforming the values helps us by normalizing the values (i.e., adjusting for inflation) or scaling the data series itself (making it possible to see the relationships between many different indicators on a single graph, despite wide variations in the ranges of values). Each line on the final chart thus corresponds to one or more columns of data used to produce the values. Some colors apply to multiple columns this is because the values that appear on the chart have been calculated by transforming the raw data in some way. Youll notice that the columns are color coded. Download the time series data Excel file for the data and the chart to follow along.įirst, to set up the basic line chart, hold Ctrl (PC) or Cmd (Mac) while you select the following columns:

To create this chart, all of the indicators were averaged by year and, where necessary, adjusted for inflation using a conversion factor. business cycle – roughly speaking, economic recessions. national economic indicators has been enhanced with regions that also indicate contractions in the U.S. Here is an example where a chart of annual U.S. One option, however, is to add regions to your time series charts to indicate historical periods or visualization binary data.

Note that while Numbers will correctly place x,y data points on the chart regardless of the order in which the pairs are listed in the table, it will connect those points in the order they are listed, leading to some interesting curves when the pairs are not sorted by their x value component.įor a more Excel-like approach to graphing, you might take a look at the open source Office applications,, LibreOffice, or NeoOffice.įor graphing functions (rather than data), see Grapher, which you'll find in the Utilities folder inside the Applications folder on your Mac.Time series data is easy to display as a line chart, but drawing an interesting story out of the data may be difficult without additional description or clever labeling. The Show axis option in both axis options menus is unchecked.

The axes on the above graph are shapes, lines inserted by the Shapes button's menu, and placed at the zero points of the two axes. Numbers will always place the x and y axes at the minimum x or y value of the range of values to be graphed, whether the minimum is set by the user or determined automatically from the data. Using the Scatter Chart, the only chart that treats the x axis as a value axis, Numbers will graph values in any of the four quadrants.

Microsoft excel for mac flip x and y axis