Axis breaks
When one value dwarfs the rest, a normal axis flattens everything else into nothing. An axis break collapses an empty stretch of the value axis so the small values stay readable and the outlier still fits.
- Select the chart and open Chart Properties → Manage Breaks.
- Enter the range you want to collapse (from / to) and confirm.
- presentaid re-plots the chart through the break, draws the break marks on the axis, and re-labels the axis with the real values.
Align scale with slide charts
Two charts side by side are only comparable if they share a scale. Chart Properties → Align Scale With Slide Charts applies the widest common minimum and maximum across charts, in a single undo step.
The scope depends on your selection:
- One chart selected: every eligible managed chart on the slide is aligned.
- Two or more charts selected: only those charts are aligned.
That second rule matters: a slide often holds unrelated charts, and forcing a revenue chart and a headcount chart onto one scale would flatten both. Select the ones that belong together.
All decorations on the affected charts re-render at the new scale, so arrows keep touching their bars.
Chart Properties
| Section | What you can set |
|---|---|
| Font size | One control for every text element in the chart |
| Bar width | The gap between bars, as a percentage |
| Show legend | None, right, top, left or bottom |
| Data labels | None, centre, inside end, inside base, outside end or data callout |
| Value axis | Manage Breaks, Align Scale |
| Chart style | Which style is in force, and Apply Chart Style |
| Excel data | Change, refresh or remove the link to an external workbook |
| Vertical / Horizontal axis | Show or hide, number format, fixed minimum and maximum |
| Show chart title | On or off |
Set a minimum or maximum to pin the axis; click Auto to hand control back to PowerPoint.
The flyout shows only what the selected chart can actually use. On a pie or doughnut the axis settings, the breaks and the scale alignment are all gone - a pie has no axes - and the bar-width slider becomes Segment spacing with a Selected segment control beneath it. A doughnut offers only "None" and "Centre" for data labels, because PowerPoint gives a doughnut no label positions to choose from.