This post explains how you can swap the axis of an Excel chart without swapping values in the sheet. Assume we have an Excel sheet like this.
If we select the data and insert a “Scatter with smooth lines” chart, then we will get a chart like this.
Or else we can insert a “Line” chart like this.
If you look at these charts, you can see that names are in the x axis. In the line chart names are visible in the x axis. But the Scatter chart shows some numbers instead of the names. Yet if you take the cursor to the Scatter chart it will show you the data points like this.
Therefore it is clear that the Scatter chart also has names in the x axis.
But then these charts don't make much sense according to how the Excel application has chosen the x axis. But it will be more understandable if we can set “Tests” as x axis instead of “Names”. One way to do that is re-arranging the data in the Excel sheet. However there is an easier way to do that without doing any change to the Excel data. We can simply do that by changing the x axis of the chart. Below are the steps to change the x axis.
First click somewhere on the chart. You will see two new tabs appear at the Excel ribbon called “Design” and “Format”.
Go to the design tab and click on the “Switch Row/Column” icon in the “Data” Group.
Scatter chart will change to something like this.
You can do the same for the line chart as well.
