X Axis giving blank leading area

Question

X Axis giving blank leading area

New to making charts so forgive me if I'm missing it... but I'm trying to create a scatter plot with average lines and whenever I make a chart is adds a bunch of blank data early in the chart.

In the example below my data starts at the year 2000. But when I make a chart is gives me all the way back to 1990, so there's a big blank area leading everything. I can't seem to find out where to fix it.

I'm also having a difficult time getting my x axis to simply be years (whole numbers)

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Posted on Jan 3, 2019 3:01 PM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

Yellowbox

Level 7

21,945 points

Jan 3, 2019 3:42 PM in response to brianwpetersen

Hi Brian,

Select the chart and look at the Format Panel on the right.

Under the Axis tab, you can change Max, Min and Steps for X and Y axes.

Try a different number of steps to get whole numbers.

Regards,

Ian.

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Answer 2

Yellowbox

Level 7

21,945 points

Jan 3, 2019 5:00 PM in response to brianwpetersen

Hi Brian,

That's the way it's supposed to be done. Numbers will work out how to give evenly spaced labels in a scatter plot. If the number of steps is preset, Numbers may be forced to create non-integer labels.

So the leading blank years don't disappear if you change the X axis minimum to 2000?

When a graph (chart) misbehaves, I find it easiest to delete it and start again.

Regards,

Ian.

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Answer 3

Jan 3, 2019 9:55 PM in response to Yellowbox

ah... the min and max does work for the leading stuff. I didn't realize I could type in "2000" and it would adjust. It was simply the light gray "auto" in the SCALE field and it didn't have a carrot to tick up or down like it did for STEPS fields so I thought it was "greyed out". Once I actually typed in 2000 I was all good. Rookie mistake.

Thanks!!

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Answer 4

Yellowbox

Level 7

21,945 points

Jan 3, 2019 10:19 PM in response to brianwpetersen

Hi Brian,

Not a rookie mistake. You discovered that the grey Auto is a feature that needs enhancement!

You can send feedback to apple, Menu > Numbers > Provide Numbers Feedback.

Include a link to this discussion https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250062322?answerId=250108911022#250108911022 to help the Apple programmers understand.

I doubt that Apple will reply, but if the programmers understand the problem, perhaps a future release of Numbers will be more intuitive. You will have helped new users!

Regards,

Ian.

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Answer 5

Jan 3, 2019 4:50 PM in response to brianwpetersen

Thanks Ian. That's what I did to get the whole numbers in the first chart, didn't know if I was doing a cheat or if that's the way it's supposed to be done.

As for the leading blank years of data it auto gave me, I'm still stumped sadly.

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Answer 6

Jan 3, 2019 5:14 PM in response to brianwpetersen

Maybe you could show more of your data that was used as the source for the chart

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X Axis giving blank leading area

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