Setting Grid Line Intervals for a Radar Chart

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated August 12, 2023)
This tip applies to Excel 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, 2021, and Excel in Microsoft 365


John created a radar chart that includes 360 data points, one for each of the 360 degrees in the chart. Excel adds radial grid lines for each of those data points, but John would prefer to have a grid line only every 10 degrees in the chart. He wonders how he can customize the chart to reflect the desired grid lines.

There is no way to accomplish this task that we've been able to discover. A radar chart, as implemented by Excel, is a "circular" version of a line chart. Just as the horizontal axis of a line chart has one mark per data point, the radar chart has one spoke per data point.

There are other types of circular charts supported by Excel, and a different one may be more suitable for the way you want data represented. One good possibility is a polar plot. For good discussion of how you might go about this, see this blog post by Jon Peltier:

http://peltiertech.com/polar-plot-excel/

ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (11190) applies to Microsoft Excel 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, 2021, and Excel in Microsoft 365.

Author Bio

Allen Wyatt

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. ...

MORE FROM ALLEN

Extra Shaded Lines

Put a page break at the beginning of a shaded paragraph and you may be surprised at what you get on your printout. This ...

Discover More

Copying Worksheets in a Macro

Copying worksheets (one or many) is easy to do manually. What is not well known is that it is even easy to make the ...

Discover More

Correctly Saving Delimited Files

Delimited files are often created through Excel so that your data can be exported to other programs. If the delimited ...

Discover More

Professional Development Guidance! Four world-class developers offer start-to-finish guidance for building powerful, robust, and secure applications with Excel. The authors show how to consistently make the right design decisions and make the most of Excel's powerful features. Check out Professional Excel Development today!

More ExcelTips (ribbon)

Charting with a Large Number of Data Set Formats

When you are trying to convey quite a bit of data in a chart, formatting all your data series can be challenging. This ...

Discover More

How to Choose the Type of Chart to Use

Excel allows you to create all sorts of charts to visually display your data. With so many options available, how do you ...

Discover More

Sorting within a Chart

When creating a chart based on data in a worksheet, you may want to sort the information in the chart without rearranging ...

Discover More
Subscribe

FREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in ExcelTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."

View most recent newsletter.

Comments

If you would like to add an image to your comment (not an avatar, but an image to help in making the point of your comment), include the characters [{fig}] (all 7 characters, in the sequence shown) in your comment text. You’ll be prompted to upload your image when you submit the comment. Maximum image size is 6Mpixels. Images larger than 600px wide or 1000px tall will be reduced. Up to three images may be included in a comment. All images are subject to review. Commenting privileges may be curtailed if inappropriate images are posted.

What is two less than 5?

There are currently no comments for this tip. (Be the first to leave your comment—just use the simple form above!)


This Site

Got a version of Excel that uses the ribbon interface (Excel 2007 or later)? This site is for you! If you use an earlier version of Excel, visit our ExcelTips site focusing on the menu interface.

Newest Tips
Subscribe

FREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in ExcelTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."

(Your e-mail address is not shared with anyone, ever.)

View the most recent newsletter.