I am not able to wrap the text of x-axis labels on Excel 2007 charts. As a result, the axis labels are overlapping onto each other. Does anyone know how can I wrap these labels?
3 Answers
After a lot of googling we found CHAR(10)
to be the solution of our problems.
As long as you have the value like:
="First Line" & CHAR(10) & "Second Line"
it will break X-Axis, Y-Axis, Chart Header etc

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2I should note that I found you only have to do this on one label (maybe your longest), and it seems that it then automatically wraps the other labels automatically. – rryanp Mar 14 '13 at 17:38
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In some cases I've used `CHAR(13)` instead. – airstrike Jul 24 '17 at 21:38
Actually, the easiest way is to force a break in the spreadsheet cell with ALT+ENTER. This will carry over to the axis labels.

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And if you are using Excel on Mac, do Ctrl + Cmd + Enter to add line break in the cell which will also be reflected in the chart. – Anupam Mar 27 '17 at 12:35
After a lot of frustration, here's how I tricked Excel:
- Select the data for the x-axis in the spreadsheet.
- Create a new custom format, entering
CTRL+j
where you want a line break. (it may appear as a box or a boxed question mark, which I'll refer to as[]
and[?]
). - On the chart, open the
Format Axis
dialog for the x-axis, and selectNumber
from the list on the left. - Select
Custom
in theCategory
list, and your new custom format should be available in theType
list. Select it and close theFormat Axis
dialog. - Change the format in the spreadsheet back to whatever you'd like.
For example, I have datetime values on the x-axis of a scatter plot, and I want the x-axis labels to look like
Thursday
April 14
12:55 PM
So, following the steps above, I enter dddd[CTRL+j]mmmm d[CTRL+j]h:mm AM/PM
as a custom format in the spreadsheet. It looks like dddd[]mmmm d[]h:mm AM/PM
in the Type list, and Thursday[?]April 14[?]12:55 PM
in the spreadsheet.
NOTE: if Wrap Text
is set for the columns, the [?]
will be replaced with a line break, but the column heights will not be automatically adjusted, so it hides all but the first row.

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