Here we have historical data showing average 30 year mortgage rates over a 5 year period.
Let’s walk through some of the options for customizing the vertical value axis.
To start off, right-click and select Format axis.
check that you’re on the axis options icon.
prefs are grouped in 4 areas: Axis options, Tick marks, Labels, and Number.
Since these are interest rates all over 3%, I’ll set the minimum to 3.
Notice Excel now displays a Reset button.
you’re able to use this button to reset default values.
Notice this changes the upper bound slightly.
The axis crossing point determines where the horizontal axis crosses the vertical axis.
There’s need to change that in this chart.
Then we have display units, log scale, and reverse order.
We’ll look at these options in separate videos.
Next up is tick marks, which are linked to the major and minor units we set earlier.
I’ll remove the gridlines to make the tick marks easier to see.
Tick marks can be set to inside, outside, and cross.
Labels have to do with where the text appears with respect to the axis.
Notice that the interest rate data does not consistently have 2 decimal places.
To fix this, I’ll apply a Number format set to 2 decimal places.
Notice “linked to source” is automatically unchecked.
In the next video, we’ll look at how to customize the category axis.
