Naming Basics Best practice recommendations are to create a chart placing independent variables on the horizontal, x-axis and dependent variables on the vertical, y-axis.

Click Chart Tools followed by Design and Format. Click the arrow for the Horizontal Axis. You are now specifically editing the x-axis range from a formatting panel.

Now we are going to position the horizontal axis. Right-click the horizontal axis and select Format Axis from the menu. A Format Axis pane will appear on the right.

Want to know how to create a scatter plot in Excel? Here's a guide on how we created a simple chart based on performance numbers.