Making a semi log graph in excel

You probably already know how to do standard graphs in Excel. Sometimes, you'll need to
take it up another level and do logarithmical or semi-logarithmical graphs. Properly made
graphs can give a concise and compact form of representation, while graphs made poorly
can be misleading and very confusing.

Why use logarithmical graphs?

If you find yourself with data spread on an extremely large area, the graph will be very compact
and you may miss some sharp drops in values because of this.
A semi-logarithmical graph is has one of the two axes (usually the abscissa) in a logarithmical
form. The logarithmical base is usually 10, but can also be e or any other base.
Well let's suppose you have the following table:
X 1 2 5 10

20

50

100

200

500

1000

2000

Y 1 2 4 16 256 65536 4.29E+09 1.84E+19 3.4E+38 1.16E+77 1.3E+154

The corresponding Excel scatter chart is this:

On the other hand, if you extract the logarithm of both X and Y rows you get this table:
log_x 0 0.3 0.7

1.3

1.7

2.3

2.7

3.3

log_y 0 0.3 0.6 1.2 2.41 4.82 9.63 19.27 38.53 77.06 154.13

And its corresponding graph:

How to obtain the logarithmic graph

Double click the axis that you want to be on a logarithmical scale. In the "Scale" tab, select the
"Logarithmical Scale" option and click ok. (this would be the Y axis for you)

Then, go to the Chart Options (in the Chart menu) and in the "Gridlines" tab check the "Minor
gridlines" on the axes you want depending of the desired graph type: semi-logarithmical or
logarithmical.