scientific numbering

[Ms J Wilkinson]

Has anyone got any bright ideas about how to get Excel to label an axis with
10-2 etc where the -2 (or any other number is a power). I've tried
everything I can think of (eg changing to text rather than number etc) &
while the cell display is correct the chart axis label isn't.

Jen

[Jon Peltier]

Hi Jen -

I've wondered this myself, and I just thought of a way to do it.

Set up a dummy series on your chart, where you want these axis tick labels to
be (like in the Arbitrary Axis example in my web site, which is broken today,
but yahoo assures will be up Sunday), and hide the default labels by
choosing None in the axis format - patterns dialog. Instead of using the XY
Chart Labeler tool (which you should download and use anyway, it's very
handy), just put data labels on this dummy series (Format series > Data
Labels > Show Value or Show Label, either way). One by one, edit the labels,
entering as text 10-2, 10-1, 100, 101, 102, etc. When the characters are
entered for each label but before you've exited edit mode on that label,
select the exponent and press Ctrl-1 (numeral one) to open the font format
dialog. Check the Superscript box. Repeat for the other labels.

- Jon
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Jon Peltier, Microsoft Excel MVP
http://www.geocities.com/jonpeltier/Excel/index.html
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In article <0ymF8.12749$b5.4...@newsfeeds.bigpond.com>, Ms J Wilkinson
said...

[Tushar Mehta]

[This followup was posted to microsoft.public.excel.charting with an
email copy to Ms J Wilkinson.
Please use the newsgroup for further discussion.]

Here's a refinement on Jon's suggestion (combined with a slightly
different interpretation of the question), together with a question.

First of all, how did you get XL to use '10' in a scientific format? I
have never been successful with anything other than 'E.'

Using text (rather than numbers), here's how you can do what you want.

Create a dummy series as Jon recommended. If his site is still non-
functional check the 'Arbitrary log scale' page of my site.

In a column, create the labels using the formula:
="10"&IF(B1<1,"","+")& LOG(B1,10), where B1 contains the power-of-10
value that you want to show (i.e., the y-values for the dummy series).
Now, use Rob Bovey's free add-in, Chartlabeler (downloadable from
www.appspro.com) to label the dummy series with the cells containing the
above formula.

--
Regards,

Tushar Mehta
www.tushar-mehta.com
Microsoft MVP -- Excel
--

In <0ymF8.12749$b5.4...@newsfeeds.bigpond.com>, Ms J Wilkinson
<je...@bigpond.com> wrote