Line and stacked column chart - Y-axis

[hwan]

Hello,

I am trying to do a line and stacked column chart to compare revenue and cost. My axis is month. I am thinking to use the line for revenue, stacked column for costA and costB(costA+costB = total cost). Unfortuntely in some cases the costs can be much higher than revenue. My question is how to make sure the scales of Y-axis for the line and the column are the same so the visualization represents the cost/revenue comparison correctly?

Thanks,

Hui

[Greg_Deckler]

Can you explain this a little more? There is only one Y-Axis for both the line and column series. Is the issue that the costs are so high as compared to revenue that you effectively see a flat line for revenue? Can you post an image and point out the issue? What would be your preferred outcome?

[hwan]

Sure.

1. this one below has only one Y-axis and the proportion is what I want.

2. This one below has 2 Y-axises and the image is misleading. You can see that in July the total costs is abut $3M vs. $800k revenue while the chart might deliver a quite different impression at first look.

Hope this makes sense,

Hui

[Sean · Accepted solution]

@hwan You can do 2 things...

1) Enter start and end values to match the primary axis

OR

2) Turn off the secondary axis

[marcusmaximus]

I'll be honest, I don't think either of these solutions really resolves it. If you don't show the secondary y axis, the line will appear at the wrong level. If you fix the axis to specific ranges then they are not scalable for when you apply filters etc.

In Tableau you are able to 'synchornize axis', which is the right solution. I don't think this is available in Power BI it seems.

[PatrikSwe]

I experienced the same thing; that my secondary y-axis was still there (invisible) when I turned off the secondary axis and that the line wasn't aligned with the primary y-axis. But in my case it was because I hade set a start value (0) for my secondary axis before turning it off, as opposed to keeping it as Auto. Once I went back to Auto for the start value of the secondary axis it dropped the "invisible" axis and aligned with the primary one.

[hwan]

Thanks Sean! Didn't know there is an option to turn off the secondary axis.