Excel doesn't give you a lot of control over the way you can lay out labels.
I assume your chart is a horizontal bar chart. To allow more room for
labels, you can make the entire chart wider, or play with font size. But
sometimes there's nothing much you can do.

I've had cases in which I had to remove the built-in axis labels, replace
them with textboxes, populate the textboxes and position them, all using
VBA. Not pretty and not as easy as it may sound.

- Jon
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Jon Peltier, Microsoft Excel MVP
Peltier Technical Services, Inc.
http://PeltierTech.com/WordPress/
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"tbraddy" wrote in message
...
I am trying to plot some data with really long axis label names (40+
char). The problem is that I cannot change the "area" that the labels
fit into.

I can change the angle to 45 degrees and everything shows up, but for
a y axis at 0 degrees it auto word wraps to fit inside the "area". Is
there a way to modify the area so that I can get my long names on
there?

I've tried modifying the source cells with Alt+ Enter to see if it
would break it up onto multiple lines, but it doesn't.

Todd