Bar Chart - Width for Axis Labels

[Squirrel]

Hi,

I'm not at all clever with ppt so apologies if this is a stupid
question.

I am producing bar charts with lengthy catagory labels on the y-axis.

Despite leaving loads of room in the chart area on the left of the
plot area, the labels insist on wrapping in a very ugly manner rather
than filling the space to the left.

Not matter how I shift the size of the chart and plot areas, the
horizontal space allowed for for the catagory labels appears to be the
same (too small!)

Creating text boxes for the labels is really not practical as I want
to use this chart as template and the order of catagories will change
on each chart.

Am using ppt 2002

Any ideas how I can get a wider space for the labels?

Many thanks

 

[Echo S]

Not really sure you can, Squirrel. Usually lowering the font size is the only way to get more of the axis label to appear. Be sure you've turned off AutoScale on the fonts tab in MS Graph -- that often helps.

There's also an "offset" option on the alignment tab when you format the axis in Graph. Setting that to 0 may give you just enough more room to make a difference.

The only other thing I know to do is adjust the plot area and the actual plot area. You can drag the handle of the plot area (well, really, the herringbone bars around the entire activated graph) so it's off the edge of the slide if you need to. I've had to do that occasionally to get long axis labels to fit.

It wouldn't be such a hassle if Graph would let us break axis labels where we *want* them to break, would it? You can do this in Excel by using Alt+Enter in the datasheet at the place where you want the break. So maybe creating the graphs in Excel and then importing them into PPT would be a good solution for you?

 

[Squirrel]

Thank you! this may help me.