Axis starting points, labels, and the tricks that accidentally mislead people.
Rahul makes a column chart of monthly sales: $40,000 in May, $42,000 in June. Excel, trying to be helpful, starts the vertical axis at $39,000 — and suddenly the June column towers at three times the height of May.
The real growth is 5%. The picture screams 300%. Rahul did not lie. His chart did.
This lesson is about the handful of small settings that decide whether a chart tells the truth. None of them are hard; the danger is that Excel sometimes picks the misleading option for you.
Rule 1 — bar charts start at zero
The whole promise of a bar is that its length is the value. Double the sales, double the bar. Chop the bottom off the axis and that promise breaks: you are no longer comparing values, only the tips of the values.
The fix: double-click the vertical axis → Axis Options → set Minimum to 0. In Google Sheets: chart editor → Customise → Vertical axis → Min value 0.
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