Line chart with very small difference in values

Question

I have data in excel that basically looks something like this:

x264    VP8     Theora
0.99593 0.99328 0.96688
0.99497 0.99243 0.96646
0.99442 0.99180 0.96680
   .............
and so on for about 4500 lines

The values are all between 0.95 and 0.99. Now I have a problem since Excel keeps drawing the Y axis (values) with scale from 0.0 to 1.0 and (it seems) rounds all the data simply to 1.0, thus I just get a straight line.

How could I do a comparative line plot of this data in range from 0.95 to 1.0?

Solution

• Right-click on the y-axis and select Format Axis...
• On the Axis Options tab change Minimum and Maximum to Fixed and supply the values you want (0.95 and 0.99)
• You can optionally set the major and minor units if you don't like Excel's choices.

Comments

[mmmmmm]

How are you creating the chart? What sort of chart are you making?

[Mavrik]

I did do that, however the line remains flat even after I set axis limits to those values.

[Mike Fitzpatrick]

@Mavrik, you should probably check your data and make sure it is numeric. If it has been imported from somewhere else it may have been imported as text rather than numbers, which might cause the problem you're having. Try applying different number format to the data (eg. increase the number of decimal places). If nothing happens to your data's appearance then it is probably text, not numeric.