To illustrate how this works, let me create another chart with a smaller set of the same data, but only include 1 year. If I temporarily switch to text, things change dramatically. Notice bounds have been set automatically based on the 5-year date range, and units are set to years. The axis type is set to automatic, but we can see that it defaults to dates, based on the bounds and units Excel has set as defaults. When I select the horizontal axis, we see category axis settings.īoth value and category axes have settings grouped in 4 areas: Axis options, Tick marks, Labels, and Number. With the vertical axis selected, we see value axis settings. We already customized the value axis, so let's make some changes to the horizontal category axis.įirst, let me point out that axis options are different depending on which axis type is selected. In a previous video, we created a line chart to show average 30 year mortgage rates over a 5 year period. To recap, a value axis is used to plot numeric data on a scale, while a category axis is used to group text or dates into specific categories. In this video, we'll look at options for customizing a category axis in an Excel chart.