Aligning Text (Excel 2003)

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I am having a problem aligning the text in the category of an Excel chart. I’m working on a project for someone and he has given me a hard copy of the chart the way he would like it to be seen. In his chart. the text in the category axis is aligned tightly to the right and next to the line that separates the text and the actual bars. It is aligned to the right. But when I create a chart. the text in the category axis is center aligned or strung out so that the chart, when embedded in a document, takes up too much room.

I am attaching a screen shot of what my chart looks like now. Can someone please tell me how to adjust that text?

Thanks,

Marilyn

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If I’m wrong, I’ll be glad, but as far as I know, the category axis labels in a bar chart are always centered. There are some very messy workarounds. All involve turning off the tick mark labels for the category axis. I have attached one approach – the chart is made borderless, and the cells containing the categories have been used as axis labels. Another approach would be to use text boxes on the chart with right-aligned text.

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Hi Hans,

Well lots of people have looked at my question, but you are the only one brave enough to answer 🙂

It seems that the fellow who created the charts that I am trying to reproduce used tables a lot in Word, as do I. I managed to get the two pie charts side by side using tables in Word and I am sure that is what he did too.

I think I am going to try tables again in Word with the text in chart problem. I figured if I removed the text in excel and then copied the chart over to Word into a two cell table. I can left align the table in one cell and then right align the text the way I want it in the adjoinging cell. I’ll have to recreate the title too in a merged cell above these two other cells. I’m pretty tenacious and my outlook is that if someone else managed to do this, so can I 🙂

Thanks for some of your suggestions on this one, but I’m very unfamiliar with Excel and don’t understand everything. However, I’ve been working on this project and problem for two days now, and have learned a lot more about Excel than I ever wanted to know 🙂

Thanks again (and thanks for your reply on my pie chart question too),

Marilyn

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Hi Hans,

Well lots of people have looked at my question, but you are the only one brave enough to answer 🙂

It seems that the fellow who created the charts that I am trying to reproduce used tables a lot in Word, as do I. I managed to get the two pie charts side by side using tables in Word and I am sure that is what he did too.

I think I am going to try tables again in Word with the text in chart problem. I figured if I removed the text in excel and then copied the chart over to Word into a two cell table. I can left align the table in one cell and then right align the text the way I want it in the adjoinging cell. I’ll have to recreate the title too in a merged cell above these two other cells. I’m pretty tenacious and my outlook is that if someone else managed to do this, so can I 🙂

Thanks for some of your suggestions on this one, but I’m very unfamiliar with Excel and don’t understand everything. However, I’ve been working on this project and problem for two days now, and have learned a lot more about Excel than I ever wanted to know 🙂

Thanks again (and thanks for your reply on my pie chart question too),

Marilyn

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It looks like if you remove the axis labels (I don’t see any way to change their alignment, either) you can use the data labels to cheat it a bit as well. Right click on one of the bars, choose Format Data Series, and on the Data Labels tab tick ‘Show Label’. Then size the plot area of the chart to be narrower and drag your labels over to the left of the chart. You can right align these labels and format them more ways than you can the axis labels.

I’m afraid it’s probably not too much better than putting text boxes in, but at least they’re linked to your source data…

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The advantage of using data labels is mostly that you can create them in one go. You can create a text box linked to a source cell by typing (for example) =Sheet3!$A$1 in the chart sheet, but you will have to create them one by one.

Thanks for this additional suggestion.

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The advantage of using data labels is mostly that you can create them in one go. You can create a text box linked to a source cell by typing (for example) =Sheet3!$A$1 in the chart sheet, but you will have to create them one by one.

Thanks for this additional suggestion.

Reply | Quote

It looks like if you remove the axis labels (I don’t see any way to change their alignment, either) you can use the data labels to cheat it a bit as well. Right click on one of the bars, choose Format Data Series, and on the Data Labels tab tick ‘Show Label’. Then size the plot area of the chart to be narrower and drag your labels over to the left of the chart. You can right align these labels and format them more ways than you can the axis labels.

I’m afraid it’s probably not too much better than putting text boxes in, but at least they’re linked to your source data…

Reply | Quote

If I’m wrong, I’ll be glad, but as far as I know, the category axis labels in a bar chart are always centered. There are some very messy workarounds. All involve turning off the tick mark labels for the category axis. I have attached one approach – the chart is made borderless, and the cells containing the categories have been used as axis labels. Another approach would be to use text boxes on the chart with right-aligned text.

Reply | Quote