How to create a secondary y axis on Excel

April 13, 2009 1:33 AM

How do I create a secondary y axis on Excel?

So I read the help menu and understand the following directions:

1. On a chart sheet click the data series that you want to plot along a secondary value axis.
2. On the Format menu, click Selected Data Series.
3. On the Axis tab, click Secondary axis.

However, the format menu does not contain 'Selected Data Series'
I thought that it was my computer until I tried it on a much more up-to-date model. I don't use excel a lot so am thinking that there is something obvious I may have overlooked.

posted by lazy robot to Computers & Internet (2 answers total)

I must say it is not very clearly written down in the help pages....

In Office 2003 on WinXP, for me it works like this:

* Select the data series in the graph you want to plot on the second axis
* Rightclick and choose the top option (i don't know the name in the english version of
Excel)
* Now there is a tab Axis and you can choose secondary axis for this data series.
posted by PaulZ at 2:15 AM on April 13, 2009

I do the same thing as PaulZ suggests in Office 2007.

They shouldn't call it creating a secondary y-axis. They should call it "plotting data on a second (separate) y-axis". It may sound like I'm splitting hairs but I think the name should be clear enough for non-frequent users like yourself.
posted by KevCed at 6:41 AM on April 13, 2009