How to Wrap X Axis Labels in an Excel Chart

In some situations, your chart might come with long category names. One disadvantage is that these long names will shrink the chart and make your chart not great. Please follow the steps below to wrap the long names in the Axis:

Step 1: In this example, we use the data in the table below, which contains the fake long category names;

Step 2: Select the data, and make a column chart by click the "Column Chart" from the "Insert" Tab (or check how to make a column chart);

Step 3: By default, you will get the column chart as below.

Obviously, in this chart, the X-Axis took to many spaces. To make the X-Axis take fewer spaces, you can do one or more of the following actions before wrapping them:

– Reduce the Font Size;
– Change the angles.
– Delete some unimportant words;

Step 4: If all the 3 methods do not work, we can wrap them into different lines by using the shortcut "Alt+Enter" in each cell.

Step 3: As we working on the category names, the chart is also changing, if you have customized your chart, there is a chance that this still not show all parts of the name, see below:

Step 4: To show all parts of the names, please double click on X-Axis. In the alignment, change the custom angle to 0 degrees and Text Direction as "Horizontal" (many users may not use this steps if the chart was not customized previously)

Step 5: The full names will show up in the chart with different lines.

Download Example

3 Comments

  1. Phil Nickel April 5, 2020
  2. David April 5, 2020
  3. FERDOUS A MOSTOFA August 2, 2021

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