# Microsoft Office Application Help - Excel Help forum > Excel Charting & Pivots >  >  "broken" y-axis in Excel charts

## burnsbyrne

I often need to graph two parameters on the same bar graph whose high values differ by a great deal - sometimes by a factor of 10 or 20 - which makes the lower values almost disappear.  I could use a second y axis but sometimes it's inconvenient to do so.  I have seen charts in scientific journals that "break" the y-axis to indicate that the scale has been compressed and partially hidden.  Is this possible in Excel?  It would really come in handy sometimes.
Mike

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## Andy Pope

Hi,

Not a builtin feature but here are some examples of how to produce a
broken axis effect.

http://peltiertech.com/Excel/Charts/BrokenYAxis.html
http://tushar-mehta.com/excel/newsgr...ial/index.html
http://www.andypope.info/charts/brokencolumn.htm

Cheers
Andy

burnsbyrne wrote:
> I often need to graph two parameters on the same bar graph whose high
> values differ by a great deal - sometimes by a factor of 10 or 20 -
> which makes the lower values almost disappear.  I could use a second y
> axis but sometimes it's inconvenient to do so.  I have seen charts in
> scientific journals that "break" the y-axis to indicate that the scale
> has been compressed and partially hidden.  Is this possible in Excel?
> It would really come in handy sometimes.
> Mike
>
>

--

Andy Pope, Microsoft MVP - Excel
http://www.andypope.info

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