How to resize the chart area/plot area/title in Excel?
Visualizing data in Excel by inserting a chart is a common method to make complex information more intuitive and easily understood. However, the default size of a chart, its plot area, or its title might not always fit your needs—especially when dealing with large datasets or when you wish to highlight specific data points for clearer communication. Adjusting the size of different chart elements in Excel allows you to optimize your worksheet’s appearance and ensures that your charts are both impactful and easy to read.
In daily work scenarios—such as making a presentation, preparing reports, or printing charts—the ability to resize the chart area, plot area, or chart title becomes particularly valuable. A larger chart area can improve readability, while resizing the plot area can help emphasize particular data ranges. Modifying the chart title size also helps in drawing attention or maintaining visual harmony with your document layout.
In Excel, resizing components like the chart area, plot area, or title is straightforward and can be done with a few simple actions. Here’s a practical guide you can follow to achieve the desired layout:
Resize the chart area in Excel
1. First, click anywhere on your chart to select it. This will reveal the Chart Tools contextual tabs at the top of the Excel window. Then click the Layout tab, or in newer Excel versions, go to the Format tab. The illustration below shows where to find these tabs:
2. Within the Current Selection group, click the drop-down arrow and choose Chart Area from the list. This action ensures you are targeting the entire chart boundary and not just one of the chart’s components. See the screenshot below:
3. Move your mouse pointer to one of the corner handles or midpoint markers on the chart border. When the cursor changes to a double-headed white arrow, click and hold, then drag the border in or out to increase or decrease the chart area’s size as needed. Release the mouse button once you reach the preferred size. Adjusting from a corner will maintain the aspect ratio, while dragging from a side may alter the width or height independently.
Tip: The above steps can be used to resize almost any part of a chart in Excel, including the plot area or individual legends, by first selecting the relevant component in the Current Selection group. However, when resizing the chart title, Excel does not allow you to resize the text box by dragging its border. Instead, you must change the title text's font size to achieve your desired visual effect. Select the chart title, highlight the text within it, and then adjust the font size, style, or color using the options on the Home tab. This approach refines the title’s size and prominence in your chart layout. See the example below:
Keep in mind that if you resize a chart area or plot area too much, it may cause overlapping or distortion of chart elements, such as labels or legends. For better alignment, use Excel’s alignment options on the ribbon. If you make mistakes, you can always use Undo (Ctrl+Z) to revert changes.
Practical tips:
- Hold the Shift key while resizing to keep proportions constrained (aspect ratio remains the same).
- Right-click and use the Format Chart Area pane for finer adjustments, including specifying exact size values for height and width.
- For consistent formatting across multiple charts, you can copy and paste the chart as a template after resizing.
If resizing does not work as expected (for example, chart handles do not appear), ensure that the chart is not protected or that you are not in an edit mode within a worksheet cell. Sometimes, worksheet protection or the selection of embedded chart objects may limit resizing functionality.
Alternative methods:
- Using the Format Chart Area dialog for precise size input:
If you need the chart area to be an exact size (such as for consistent print layouts), select the chart, right-click the border, choose Format Chart Area, then set the exact height and width under the Size & Properties panel. This is ideal for preparing charts for publication or printing to fit predefined dimensions. - Resizing via VBA code:
For batch operations or automated resizing, especially when handling multiple charts, you can use a VBA macro to specify the chart size for one or more charts at once. Refer to the VBA batch resize solution in the related resources for details.
Relative Articles:
- Resize worksheet tabs in Excel
- Resize row height or column width to fit text in Excel
- Batch resize charts with VBA in Excel
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