How to add secondary axis in a chart in Excel 2010?

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In this post, I’ll show you how you can add secondary axis in a chart in Excel 2010:

First up, Why do you need secondary axis?

Look at the Data and the chart that I just created:

creating a chart from Data excel 2010

Notice something? Column A is not “visible” – Is it? So Now let’s see the effect how adding a Secondary Axes:

secondary axis in a chart in excel 2010

Looks better? Here are the steps:

1. Select the chart

2. can you see charts tool options in the menu bar? Yes? Great!

3. Switch to Format Tab

4. select the column that you want to put on a secondary axes:

select column in format area data excel chart

5. After selecting the column, click on Format Selection

6. In the dialog box, select secondary axes:

secondary axis excel 2010 chartclick on close.

7. Can you see the secondary axis now? Great!

secondary axis in a chart in excel 2010

8. Let’s do one more thing!

Let’s change the chart type of the secondary axis. Here are the steps:

a. Make sure the column is selected from the format Tab

b. Switch to the Design Tab under the charts Tool

c. Click on change chart type and select the chart of your choice. I select a column chart and this is how it looks:

more than one chart type on a single chart in excel 2010

Conclusion:

In this post, we saw how to add a secondary axis. We also saw how to change the chart type of the secondary axis.

2 thoughts on “How to add secondary axis in a chart in Excel 2010?

  1. Chris

    There’s a much easier and quicker way. Right click on the line on the graph you want on the secondary axis, select ‘Format Data Series’. That takes you straight to your step 6.

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