Formatting Lines: Axes, Tick Marks, High/Low Lines, and Error Bars

Excel enables you to format just about any line element of a chart. The axes, for example, can be boldfaced and/or displayed with dots or dashes, colors, patterns, or different line weights. The same formatting options apply to high/low lines, tick marks, and error bars. Tick marks on the value or category axis can be removed from the axes altogether, placed inside the axes, crossed over the axes, or moved to the outside.

For radar, doughnuts, pies, and other nonrectangular charts, formatting options are available that don't apply to rectangular charts, such as column charts or bar charts. See the later section “Formatting Data Series” for details on these options.