This is easy to do as long as you structure the source data in a particular way.
Here we have a list of the busiest US airports.
But what if I want to group the cities in by region?
To straighten out the labels, I need to restructure the data.
First, I’ll sort by region and then by activity.
Next, I’ll remove the extra, unneeded entries from the region column.
The goal is to create an outline that reflects what you want to see in the axis labels.
Now you’re free to see we have a multi level category axis.
If I remove region…the checkbox is gone.
I’ll undo that.
you’ve got the option to add more labels to create more than two levels.
For example, I can use select data to include the airport codes as well.
However, note that label values need to be in adjacent ranges.
The solution is to move codes next to region.
Note that I’m holding down the shift key here to insert cells.
Now I can edit the axis labels again and get the axis to display correctly.
If I delete this chart, then select both region and code, along with activity.
Excel will build a two-level axis correctly on the first try.
