INTRODUCTION
Secondary axis allows us to plot two pieces of data with large differences in their scale. For instance, plotting the number of new COVID cases, which number in the hundreds of thousands, will outweigh the number of employees who lose their jobs, which number in the tens of thousands. There is an order of magnitude that makes it difficult to see how these two metrics are presented side-by-side on a single figure. However, we can take advantage of the secondary vertical axis to present both pieces of data that will be visually intuitive to interpret, while preserving the differences in their scale. One problem with this method is how Excel executes this. Instead of maintaining the bar or column chart, Excel will overlay both bars (or columns). This is illustrated in Figure 1.
Figure 1. Excel overlays the two bars in the figure when using the secondary axis.
To address this issue, we will use a method described by Steve True on his Excel Dashboard Templates Website.
MOTIVATING EXAMPLE
We will use data from the California’s Employment Development Department to visualize the number of employees who lost their jobs during the COVID-19 pandemic and compare these trends to the number of new COVID-19 cases in California. Data on the number of COVDI-19 cases in California came from the California Data Portal. You can also download the Excel exercise file from the following shared Dropbox location.
Step 1. Selecting the data.
First, inspect the data. There are three columns of data the contain the month, number of employees affected, and the number of new COVID-19 cases. Next select the data and insert a “Clustered Column” chart.
Excel will automatically generate a figure where the dates are on the X-axis and the values for the metrics are on the Primary Y-axis.
Notice that the Number of new cases is exponentially larger than the number of employees who lost their jobs during the pandemic. It is difficult to see how the pandemic impacts the number of employees who’ve lost their jobs. To address this, we’ll use the secondary axis for the Number of new cases.
Step 2. Select the secondary axis.
To select the secondary axis, right-click on one of the orange bars that denotes the Number of new cases. This will open a window where you can select “Format Data Series…” Once you’ve done this, select the “Secondary Axis.” This will change your current bar chart into a chart with two axes.
The problem with this updated chart is the way Excel overlays the bars. Here is an illustration of how Excel does this. By changing the gap width, we reveal that the bars are actually over one another and not stacked.
Step 3. Fixing this problem.
The solution to this issue is to add gaps between the bars. Add two new columns between the Number of Employees affected and the Number of new cases; label these as “gap1” and “gap2.”
Now, select all the data and insert a bar chart. You should get the following chart.
Right-click on the yellow bar to open the Format Data Series option. In the Format Data Series window, use the “Series Options” drop-down button to select the data element we want to edit. The first data element is “gap2” and the second data element is “gap1.” We want to assign “gap2” to the Secondary Axis and “gap1” to the Primary Axis. Make sure that you change the “Gap Width” to 25% for both the “gap1” and “gap2” data elements. Keep the “Series Overlap” at 0% for both data elements.
Now, your bar chart should have the bars for the Number of Employees affected and the Number of new cases side-by-side (rather than overlaid) and using both axes.
We could improve this bar chart by editing the legend to remove the “gap1” and “gap2” labels, change the color of the bars, modify the fonts, add axis labels, and add a chart title.
CONCLUSIONS
It is possible to use Excel to create bar charts with two vertical axes. Although Excel doesn’t do this intuitively, we can use the extra columns denoted by “gap1” and “gap2” to generate the space needed to have the bars side-by-side.
REFERENCES
I ran into this problem when I wanted to use two different scales of metrics on a recent project, and I was perplexed as how Excel doesn’t intuitively create the bar chart that I needed. Fortunately, I found Steve True’s Excel Dashboard Templates website where he details how to solve this issue. I highly recommend visiting his site as he has wealth of resources on how to use Excel efficiently.
California COVID-19 data are located at the California Open Data Portal
Data on California layoffs are located at California Employment Development Department
