Plotting Data Using the Secondary Axis

Quick reference

• 00:04 For the next chart on our dashboard we want to fill the area that actually
• 00:08 provides a chart for revenue versus customer visits.
• 00:12 The challenge that we have here is that the data that we're gonna use for
• 00:16 these things is a different scale and that becomes a little bit of a problem.
• 00:21 So, let's grab the data that we want to chart.
• 00:25 And I'm gonna make another combination chart out of this, but
• 00:27 we're gonna start with going to a 2D line chart.
• 00:31 And at this point, I'm going to change the Store Entries into a column chart.
• 00:38 So, when we do that, Store Entries will become a column.
• 00:41 And we'll say, Okay.
• 00:43 As you can see,
• 00:44 the challenge here is there's a real big difference between these two scales.
• 00:49 Revenue is in the thousands and that's good, which is where we want it, but
• 00:54 the customer visits is sometimes under 100, so, these don't really plot all that
• 00:58 well if you're trying to actually figure out if the trend is related.
• 01:02 So, what we're gonna do is we're gonna modify this to use the secondary access.
• 01:09 So, we'll format data series and you'll notice that as soon as we do that,
• 01:13 it comes in and says, would you like to plot this on the primary axis, meaning,
• 01:16 would you like to use the same values as you used for your revenue or
• 01:19 would you like to flip this to the secondary access?
• 01:23 When we choose to do that it will actually flip it out right away
• 01:27 to use a different scale and that scale shows up on the right hand side.
• 01:31 Now, one thing to be cautious of, if you look at this and go, I don't need that,
• 01:35 Delete, it goes back to the primary access.
• 01:39 So, I'm just gonna press control Zed to undo that.
• 01:42 This is something that gets forced on you when you're working with these things,
• 01:46 you can't have two different values,
• 01:48 different number scales that don't have an axis to actually display that case.
• 01:52 And it's kind of important, you need to have that kind of information there.
• 01:57 Now, this is cool and everything else, but
• 01:59 we can do some things to make it look a little bit better.
• 02:01 Number one, we should give it some context, so, we'll go and
• 02:03 give it a title, Store Visits vs Revenue.
• 02:06 And I'm gonna go and soften this one a little, I don't know,
• 02:09 that I really want this in this dark orange.
• 02:11 So, I'm gonna grab this particular chart and again, I can come over to the fill
• 02:14 area here and I could change the fill here or I could right-click on this one and
• 02:18 say, let's make this fill into something that looks like,
• 02:22 that's a little too dark, how about something that looks about there, perfect.
• 02:26 So, a nice gray background that's not really obnoxious.
• 02:30 Now we can go and we can, well,
• 02:32 we don't want to format a data point, we got to watch these kind of things up here.
• 02:36 So, we'll go and click here and right click and say, Format Data Series, again.
• 02:41 You'll notice that it's all ready come up.
• 02:43 I can drop my gap width down.
• 02:45 I'm gonna bring it down to about, I don't know, 45%,
• 02:48 something like that, that gives me some room.
• 02:51 So, that I can right click and drop in some data labels.
• 02:56 In fact, I even wanna have a little bit less gap with, I think,
• 03:00 I'm gonna drop this down to about 20%.
• 03:03 There we are and now, I can grab my data labels and
• 03:07 I'm going to push these down to the base.
• 03:11 So, there we are, all my data labels are now sitting nice down low.
• 03:16 I just want one more thing for this chart, I think, and
• 03:18 that's to add some markers to this particular series.
• 03:21 So, we come over and take a look and I don't see my option here.
• 03:26 Always tries to catch me up by this, by hiding this one.
• 03:29 Go to Marker, Marker Options, gonna use Built In and
• 03:33 I'm gonna go with a circle this time.
• 03:35 But this time, I'm thinking, you know, it'll be more fun to do this,
• 03:38 let's change the fill, to no fill.
• 03:40 And now, when I go and click away,
• 03:43 you can see that my markers are empty little circles, which is kind of neat.
• 03:47 So, that's no fill.
• 03:49 If I actually wanted to change them up a little bit more,
• 03:52 I could even come back and say, you know what, maybe,
• 03:55 my marker is gonna use a solid fill and that solid fill is going to be White.
• 04:03 And that makes them pop even a little bit more.
• 04:06 So, that's a pretty nice looking chart.
• 04:08 It is kind of a bummer that we can't delete the secondary axis values,
• 04:11 particularly, since we have data labels already in place for these, but
• 04:15 you know what, at the end of the day it'll work.
• 04:18 That's one of them key magic things about working with the secondary axis is we
• 04:22 can plot different values on different scales.
• 04:26 Engineers actually make use of this kind of technique all the time, but for
• 04:30 financial information, most of the time, we're in the same scale, but in this case,
• 04:33 it's definitely different.
• 04:35 So, let's go grab this, we'll go Ctrl-X,
• 04:37 we'll take this guy over to our dashboard and we'll paste in place here.
• 04:42 Again, hold down the Alt key to resize this and
• 04:44 make sure that everything is lined up exactly where we want with the cells.
• 04:49 And we've now got a nice little chart there to add to our dashboard that's
• 04:52 making things start to flash out really well, with a lot of the key stats we need.

Lesson notes are only available for subscribers.