How to switch X and Y axis in Google Sheets

When using Google Sheets to create charts, it isn’t uncommon to want to change the position of the X and Y axis on a chart. As a matter of fact, doing this can make a significant impact on your chart, making it clear and easy to understand.

Whether you’re creating charts for professional or personal use, knowing how to switch the X and Y axis in Google Sheets will greatly improve the quality of your work.

If you want to know how to switch X and Y axis in Google Sheets, you’re welcome to read further, as today’s guide will show you how to do this without sweating it.

Switching X and Y axis in Google Sheets using Chart Editor

Switching the X and Y axis in Google Sheets isn’t rocket science, and with the chart editor, anyone can do this with just a few clicks, and we aren’t bluffing.

Let’s say we have the following scatter chart showing height on the X-axis and weights along the Y-axis.

How To Switch X and Y Axis in Google Sheets

Assuming you’d like to switch the axes, that is, make weight the y-axis and height the x-axis, you can take the following simple steps to make the entire process easy.

Click anywhere within your chart or graph.
You should notice an ellipsis or hamburger appear in the top right corner of your chart. To avoid any confusion, here is what it looks like.

Click on the ellipses, and a drop-down menu should pop up, after which you can click on the “Edit chart” option.

Note: If this step seems confusing, you can simply right-click on your chart and select “Data Range” from the context menu you see. Here is what we mean:

You should now notice a chart editor on the extreme right of your spreadsheet. Using the chart editor, you can make quick changes to your chart. Also, the chart editor allows you to specify the sources from which you’d want the chart to extract data from.

From the Setup tab on the chart editor, you’ll find different options that allow you to select from different chart types.

Under the X-axis option, you’ll find the column we currently use as our x-axis. For this guide, it is the Weight column. To switch this, all you need to do is click on the column listed as X-axis (the Weight)

This should display a list of available columns as featured in your data set. Now, choose the column you’d like to use as the X-axis from the list. For this guide, we need to choose “Height” as the column name.

Having switched the option for the X-axis, you also want to do the same for the Y-axis. And that, too, is pretty straightforward. Under the “Series” category on your chart editor, you’ll see the column currently used as the y-axis. If you have more than two columns in your chart, you’ll see their names displayed under this category. If that’s the case, then it is recommended you choose the first column name in the list for the Y-axis. To change this column, all you need to do is click on the column name and choose “Weight” as in our example.

If you did the last step exactly as we showed you, you should notice the same data but with your axes now switched. In our example, you should notice that Height is now represented in the X-axis while Weight is used in the Y-axis.

Having shown you how to switch axis in Google Sheets, you should now see that your axes have changed their source columns. Unfortunately, as you’d see from the above image, the axis labels haven’t changed. From the image above, you can see the label for the X-axis as height while the Y-axis is still showing as weight. Here are two ways to change the axis labels.

Start by double-clicking the label text and enter the new text you want as the new axis label.
After that, click anywhere outside the text container, and your changes should be saved.

Here is a short video demonstration showing you exactly how to do it.

If this option sounds confusing, you can try changing the columns in the axes instead of just typing the text you want

. A good way to approach this is to remove one axis at a time and re-add it using a new column name. Here is how to go about it.

On the chart editor, click on the ellipsis sitting next to the column name as represented by X-Axis or Series.

Now, choose the remove option from the drop-down list that pops up.

To re-add a new column name, all you need to do is click on the “Add X-Axis’ or Add Series box, whichever works for you and choose a new column name from the dropdown menu that appears.

By following the steps outlined above, your chart should be updated to show the new X-axis or Y-axis exactly how you want it.

That wasn’t too challenging, was it?

Conclusion

Switching the x and y axis in Google Sheets when working with charts can look like a daunting task, especially if this is your first time attempting it. But guess what? Google Sheets have made the entire process easy, and in today’s post, we showed you how to do it without any hassles.

In today’s tutorial, we didn’t only show you how to switch the X and Y axis in Google Sheets when dealing with charts and graphs; we also showed you how you could seamlessly change the columns used to represent the X and Y axis of your chart.

If you have problems getting it done after reading today’s guide, we suggest you repeat the steps. We are sure you must have missed a few steps.

We hope you have learned a thing or two in today’s guide on how to switch X and Y axis in Google Sheets.

For other exciting Google Sheets tutorials, you are welcome to explore our blog, as we have tons of exciting Google Sheets tutorials that will make your job much easier.

Frequently asked questions

Can you switch axis in Google Sheets?

If there is anything we love about Google Sheets, it is how easy they have made it for users to switch X and Y axis in Google sheets. And just so you know, you don’t need to have extensive experience before you can do this. Here are the steps to take to switch axis in Google Sheets:

Open the chart editor.
Change the X-axis data in your spreadsheet to the data in Y-axis
Change the data in the Y-axis (Series) to the data in X-axis.

It’s honestly that easy.

Do you need extensive Google Sheets experience to switch X and Y axis in Google Sheets?

Whether you have been using Google Sheets for a while or this is your first time exploring this tool, rest assured that you can switch X and Y axis in Google Sheets without any issues. More so, in today’s guide, we have gone over how to do it. In case of any confusion or doubt, feel free to comment; we will be more than happy to provide you with clarifications.