Hi Ewa,
I just tried Arck Tang's suggestion and it works perfectly - but the Month column must be formatted as Text in order for this trick to work.
To format the column (in this case Column A) as text, click on the letter A at the top of the column and press Command-1. In the dialog, look for Text in the list of formatting options and then click the OK button.
If you plan to use the months as dates in calculations or for automatic displays such as conditional formatting, pivottables, slicers, etc where you want Excel to know the date value, you'll need to add an additional column foratted as Date. You can always hide the extra column, but you may need to use the date values instead of text for certain features.
Answer from Jim G on learn.microsoft.comHello everyone,
I'm trying to add a subscript to an axis title in a graph. This is for a chemistry graph, so we need the subscripts for the molecule formulas. I can put subscripts in the table but they don't appear in the graph.
Thanks
Hi Ewa,
I just tried Arck Tang's suggestion and it works perfectly - but the Month column must be formatted as Text in order for this trick to work.
To format the column (in this case Column A) as text, click on the letter A at the top of the column and press Command-1. In the dialog, look for Text in the list of formatting options and then click the OK button.
If you plan to use the months as dates in calculations or for automatic displays such as conditional formatting, pivottables, slicers, etc where you want Excel to know the date value, you'll need to add an additional column foratted as Date. You can always hide the extra column, but you may need to use the date values instead of text for certain features.
Hi! Thank you for your response. It works, but still it is impossible to do letters in subscript and superscript. Do you have any idea for that?
You can't natively use super/sub scripts in Excel Chart labels. However, you can use a fairly simple trick to get Excel to do it.
- Create your chart with your data.
- Add three helper columns to use for your axis label points. Use your preferred x-values and use 0 for your y-values, then add a column for your preferred label (e.g. 2^14, as 214).
- Add the points from your helper columns to your chart.
- Format the new series (which should be a series of points along the x-axis) to no point (or a cross, if you'd prefer a "tick" on the axis).
- Now, you'll need to download Rob Bovey's XY Chart Labeler and install it as an Excel add-in. If you want to break out of Excel's basic formatting to do interesting Charts, this is a must-have (or you could write your own version in VBA).
- Using Chart Labeler, select your helper series and assign the label column as your series' labels, with a location = Bottom.
- Finally, select the superscript portion of each label and format your font for superscript. This has to be done individually for each label. Also, if you update the values, you'll have to reformat.

You could create text boxes containing the axis labels just as you want them to appear.
While typing into a text box, highlight the text you want to appear superscript and press the plus sign key while holding CTRL + ALT. Click and grab the green dot on the text box to rotate it.

I have a bar graph with an x-axis in which I need to superscript only part of the text. The numbers I am trying to superscript at values in a corresponding manuscript. Even though the source cells have the citations superscripted (see below), the subsequent labels in the bar graph will not superscript.
How do I superscript the citation numbers for the values represented in the x-axis?
Superscripted source labels Bar graph where x-axis values will not superscript
I have 2 ways:
1. If you are using only the "1", "2" and "3" digits in superscript, you can change them to these characters:
- character ¹: in your keyboard: alt+0185 / US-International Keyboard: altgr+1
- character ²: in your keyboard: alt+0178 / US-International Keyboard: altgr+2
character ³: in your keyboard: alt+0179 / US-International Keyboard: altgr+3
1.1. Note: In alt+#### and similar combos, you have to hold alt and then hit the digits from numpad number keys (not the ones above letters), i.e., alt+0185 = hold alt, press numpad 0, press numpad 1, press numpad 8, press numpad 5, release alt
1.2. Note: I'm not sure about the name of "US-International Keyboard", but in a lot of keyboards I used (one had a similar name) that combos (altgr+1, 2 or 3) worked.
2. You can use another character font. Some fonts are designed for math, so:
2.1. Install one of these fonts:
- DejaVu (and its variants - Sans: normal, condensed, light, mono / Serif: normal, condensed): I think it is the more known of my list
- Cambria Math
- Candara
- Consolas
- Constantia
- Corbel
- Lucida Sans Unicode
- Segoe UI
2.2. Open your excel file, select cells containing legend text and change font to one of these
2.3. Use Windows Charmap (Start > Run > Charmap) or Office Insert > Symbol menu to copy and paste or insert superscript (or subscript) characters you want on the contentes of these cells
2.4. Double click on graph, select the legend and change font to the chosen one
2.5. See an example in my Google Docs using DejaVu Sans: https://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0B0HwU0hzcrxVNjA2NTRkOTAtNjc1My00ZDVmLWJjZGUtODIzZDlhMDk4ZDRl&hl=pt_BR
HOT TRICK!!!!!!!
If can only copy-paste following characters (including letters) in superscript and subscript. Do it in your Excel file. Remember to use Unicode fonts (you can use mentioned fonts above / this text was copied from Wikipedia and Chris Morgan's answer on a StackOverflow question and edited):
Consolidated for cut-and-pasting purposes, the Unicode standard defines complete sub- and super-scripts for:
numbers and common mathematical symbols ( ⁰ ¹ ² ³ ⁴ ⁵ ⁶ ⁷ ⁸ ⁹ ⁺ ⁻ ⁼ ⁽ ⁾ ₀ ₁ ₂ ₃ ₄ ₅ ₆ ₇ ₈ ₉ ₊ ₋ ₌ ₍ ₎ )
a full superscript Latin lowercase alphabet except q ( ᵃ ᵇ ᶜ ᵈ ᵉ ᶠ ᵍ ʰ ⁱ ʲ ᵏ ˡ ᵐ ⁿ ᵒ ᵖ ʳ ˢ ᵗ ᵘ ᵛ ʷ ˣ ʸ ᶻ )
a limited uppercase Latin alphabet ( ᴬ ᴮ ᴰ ᴱ ᴳ ᴴ ᴵ ᴶ ᴷ ᴸ ᴹ ᴺ ᴼ ᴾ ᴿ ᵀ ᵁ ⱽ ᵂ ) - no C, F, Q, S, X, Y, Z
a few subscripted lowercase letters ( ₐ ₑ ₕ ᵢ ₖ ₗ ₘ ₙ ₒ ₚ ᵣ ₛ ₜ ᵤ ᵥ ₓ )
and some Greek letters ( ᵅ ᵝ ᵞ ᵟ ᵋ ᶿ ᶥ ᶲ ᵠ ᵡ ᵦ ᵧ ᵨ ᵩ ᵪ ).
Note that since these glyphs come from different ranges, they may not be of the same size and position, depending on the typeface.
In excel 2013, I edited the data series names in the formula bar and when I wanted to insert a "2" as subscript, I just went to INSERT tab > Symbols > Symbol, selected my font, and inserted the character I wanted.
Figured it out. "Right clicking" on the highlighted number and selecting "Font..." from the drop-down menu instead of hitting the Command+T shortcut opens up a different-looking text editing window and ticking the subscript box there successfully changes the text. Hope this also helps someone else.
I have been trying to edit chart axis titles to change numbers into sub- or superscript. Highlighting the number in the axis title text and hitting Command+T gets me to the text formatting window, but ticking either superscript or subscript and subsequently clicking on the "OK" button returns an error message saying "Integer is not valid." Can anyone please help with an alternative way to perform this function? Many thanks.
Thanks. This was helpful. I can't believe what a mess this program is after being out of beta for almost a year. The entire scheme for dealing with formatting items (text, plots, drawing items) is a huge step backwards.