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mhart
New Member

Force second y axis

Is there a way for force a second y-axis?  I create graphs with combo lines and bars.  Bars on the primary y-axis and are typically hudreds of thousands of dollars, while I would like to have my lines on a secondary y-axis to reflect dollars into the millions.   Sometimes Power BI decides to aoutomatically create the sencondary y-axis, but I would like to force this everytime.  It looks strange with my primary y axis values (bars) are so small and low compared to my secondary (line) values.  This can be done easily in Excel, why not here? 

14 REPLIES 14
robinwilson16
Frequent Visitor

Thanks for this. I have also just spent ages looking and I too missed the grey scrollbar inside the second grey scrollbar inside the sligtly darker grey background. It is a bit too subtle!

I was just trying to fix the fact that on a grouped bar and line graph it had set the scales differently for the line and bar values. I would have though it better to default to the same scale for both (i.e. 0% - 100%) as I would have thougt that would normally be the desired outcome.

Benjamin
Regular Visitor

Awesome!  Sorry I thought I did my due diligence looking for that scroll bar as well. Smiley Embarassed

Benjamin
Regular Visitor

Yes, I have the same issue. Can someone please answer how to get the option to show up for controling a second Y axis. I see this, https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/powerbi-service-tutorial-combo-chart-merge-visuali... But this is just not showing up for us. The chart looks rediculous without being able to turn the second Y axis on. 

@teylyn@Benjamin There are only certain visuals it shows up for. The two are the "line and stacked column chart" and "line and clustered column chart" in both these visuals if you click on the y-axis under Format (Paintbrush) and scroll down in the y-axis area - you will see "Show Secondary"


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@mhart @teylyn @Benjamin

Use Line and Stacked Column Chart

When you turn on and open the Y-Axis options - there will be a scroll bar - scroll down to Show Secondary - Y-Axis(Line)

Lina and Stack Column.png

When I turn on 2nd axis nothing happens, what am I missing?

When I turn on 2nd axis nothing happens, what am I missing?

Thank you Sean!! I see it now.

 

The all-encompassing glorious grayness is really not helpful for discoverability of features. Especially since in the documentation screenshot it looks like the setting is at the top of the Y axis options, again, due to the bad color choice of the scroll bar.

 

Feature request: Make scroll bars in the formatting sections more discoverable. Gray is not a good color!!

Seems they have taken comment by @teylyn very seriously. Secondary Axis option goes missing in April 2016 update. 😞

No it is still there in the Apr update, you just have to scroll down the thin grey bar far enough. Many features are potentially unseen due to this scroller / colour issue.

thanks for this!  Just spent about 45 mins searching forums to try and find it!!!

Sean
Community Champion
Community Champion

There's only one 1 way to fix this.

 

The Formatting options need to be in their contextual tabs in the Ribbon where there's a lot more room.

 

See my post here... which includes link to the Idea already created

http://community.powerbi.com/t5/Desktop/April-2016-Update-Formatting-Options/m-p/32408/highlight/tru...

greggyb
Resident Rockstar
Resident Rockstar

I know of no way to force a default behavior for newly created charts, but you can always turn on the secondary axis for any combo chart (section about halfway down the page - sorry, no anchor links) in the visual formatting menu.

I don't see the "Show Secondary" in the Y axis options for a combo chart.  Has this option disappeared?

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