XTICKLABEL_ROTATE

Rotate XTickLabel to better accommodate long labels and text labels.

Description

A modified version of XTICKLABEL_ROTATE90, this version allows for arbitrary angle rotation and most importantly the use of text labels. In addition, an attempt is made to adjust the size and placement of the axis and xlabel to accommodate the new labels.

  Example : %Use text labels rotated 45° without tex interpreter
   boxplot(randn(5,5),1)
   xticklabel_rotate([1:5],45,{'label_1','label_2','label_3','label_4','label_5'},'interpreter','none')

Rev.2010 due to user comments

Acknowledgements

The author wishes to acknowledge the following in the creation of this submission:
XTICKLABEL_ROTATE90
This submission has inspired the following:
yticklabel_rotate, Rotate XTick Labels for multi-axes

• MATLAB release: MATLAB 7.4 (R2007a)

[Martin Schaefer]

You saved me from using Excel for a whole bunch of Bargraph plots.
Thanks very much for that.
Another nice option would be to edit the ticks freely, that means to allow 2 line ticks and things alike

[David Sterling]

Nicely done! Now I don't have to rotate my plotting axis(eg. barh and horizontal boxplot) to handle the long strings that inevitably creep into my categorical tick labels.

[John Godward]

I spent some time looking for standard Matlab functions to do this with no luck. Then I found this m-file which did what was required. Thanks.

[Alf Magnusson]

You made my day (nigth) Thanks

[Imola Fodor]

Awesome. Thanks!

[Anshuman Bansal]

Well Done!
I was struggling with this issue since last couple of months! Trying to write my own unsuccessful code..! Saved me a lot of time! I guess it should be part of standard MATLAB package

[K H]

For this and similar functions where text replaces ticks, is there a way to make it react to zooming?

[Brian Katz]

As this operation removes the current labels and places text objects a tthe appripriate place in the figure window, there is no dynamic link to the axis afterwards, making zoom response difficult. Until MatLab integrates this type of behavoir directly into the label properties I think it would be very difficult to include dynamic behavior.

[Yuval Cohen]

Other than the zoom issue, perfect. BRAVO!

[Prasanth Karumanchi]

awesome stuff

[les ander]

??? Error using ==> set
Width and height must be > 0.

Error in ==> xticklabel_rotate at 168
set(gca,'position',newpos) ;

[mark drever]

this was sweet.

[Isabella Osetinsky]

Thank you. Solves many problems!
Add "set(gca,'tickdir','out')" to point out the label location.

[Malik Yousef]

When i use your code on 4 subplots i get weird results whne one of them that has different axis.
And i see that the subplot become so small!!
How to overcome this problem

[Kay Pham]

This is great! It's really useful! Thanks.

[Kay Pham]

This is really useful! GREAT!

[Fangwen Lu]

It's cool!

[Shai Shen-Orr]

If you try setting to a different font through XTickLabel_rotate function call or after the labels has been set - the entire axis is messed up.

[Brian Katz]

I have re-tested this with changing fonts in the original call and also afterwards via the handle, with no problems...

[Stanley Bileschi]

works exactly like I wanted it to

[Nathan Pust]

Very helpful code.
if lines 68-77 are changed to as follows, the code will allow the current text labels to be used and property value pairs to be changed for those labels. Example usage:

xticklabel_rotate([],45,[],'Fontsize',14)

Lines 68-76:
if (nargin < 3 || isempty(varargin{1})) & (~exist('XTick') | isempty(XTick)),
    xTickLabels = get(gca,'XTickLabel') ; % use current XTickLabel
    % remove trailing spaces if exist (typical with auto generated XTickLabel)
    temp1 = num2cell(xTickLabels,2) ;
    for loop = 1:length(temp1),
        temp1{loop} = deblank(temp1{loop}) ;
    end
    xTickLabels = temp1 ;
    varargin = varargin(2:length(varargin));
end

[George C]

just when i was about to switch to excel, i found this! MATLAB rocks!!

[Greg Heins]

Awesome - worked first time - like the TeX ability.

[Greg Heins]

Awesome - worked first time - like the TeX ability.

[Brent Bergan]

As soon as you zoom in, the tick labels do not follow appropriately. Too bad, this would have been a great function

[Patrick Freeman]

Very useful function for displaying long labels. Good job!

[Natalia Rivera]

This is really helpful. Thank you!

[David K]

Excellent utility. It almost needs to be part of matlab. This is so essential.

[Chris Lowis]

Brilliant, solved my problem with a single function call using the default options.

[Korey Y]

Great function. I had to place my X-axis labels at the top and therefore have them left-aligned so I added a few lines somewhere around line 141:

xAxisLocation = get(gca, 'XAxisLocation');
if (xAxisLocation == 'top')
    set(hText,'Rotation',rot,'HorizontalAlignment','left',varargin{:})
else
    set(hText,'Rotation',rot,'HorizontalAlignment','right',varargin{:})
end

[Peter Pan]

Nice function, thanks a lot!

There is a small error, it occurs just when only one XTickLabelName is given.

For example:
bar( [ 1 ] ); xticklabel_rotate;

It claims on line 160, cause get(htext, 'extent' ) gives no cell, but an array back.
My solution:
x = get( hText, 'extent' );
if iscell( x ) == true
    textsizes = cell2mat( x ) ;
else
    textsizes = x;
end
with line 160 deleted works.

Any,
   Thanks!

[Peter Pan]

Sorry,
but this rating system is confusing.

The function is perfect, just a small buck.

[M Shaw]

Very helpful and well documented. Thanks!!

[flicker 420]

Thanks..Nice work

[Federico De Masi]

THanks... tens of boxplots to process. Not automated thanks to this script.

[Tue]

 

[Fredrik]

 

[Etsuko]

 

[Gilles Criton]

Thank you very much, so useful !

[Salifou]

Great Function. Thanks a bunch! It saved me from caving in to Stata.

[Theresa]

Unfortunately, I have not had the success of others with this file. When it rotates the labels, it overlays them onto the plot so they are half over the x-axis and data, and half where they should be. It looks horrible and I can't use the figures that way.

Update: The bug is in rotating 90 degrees. Other rotations work OK. But it's annoying to not have full rotation functionality.

[Theresa]

Another update: using the full command works with rotations of 90 degrees for me.

i.e. xticklabel_rotate([], 90, []) works well, but xticklabel_rotate does not work. Now that I can use the full functionality of this nice program I want to update my original rating.

[Tove]

 

[bob]

Problem, same as les ander:

 ??? Error using ==> set
Width and height must be > 0.

Error in ==> xticklabel_rotate at 168
set(gca,'position',newpos) ;
 

any help?

thx

[Theresa]

Another update: when you rotate the labels they're not always lined up with each other. Super annoying and makes the figure unusable for publication....which makes the function pretty much useless to me. Sorry...seems like a good start but I've encountered too many small annoying bugs that make the figures publication unfriendly.

[Benjamin]

I have the same Problem

Error in ==> xticklabel_rotate at ...

Seems to be a problem because I changed the XAxisLocation to 'Top'

I will check if there is a simple solution if there is solution yet.

[Benjamin]

a fast and easy solution is to comment

set(gca,'position',newpos) ;

and, if necessary, set the new position manually

for me, with a few changes, it works very well

[Diego Orlando]

 

[Aaron]

Useful, but labels are offset (as are titles) when using multiple subplots (specifically, a 2x2 array of subplots).

[Li]

The example does not work:
boxplot(randn(5,5),1)
   xticklabel_rotate([1:5],45,{'label_1','label_2','label_3','label_4','label_5'},'interpreter','none')
??? Error using ==> xticklabel_rotate at 71
xticklabel_rotate : can not process, either xticklabel_rotate has already been
run or XTickLabel field has been erased

[Brian Katz]

Please note that, as stated in the function and the error message above, XTickLabel_Rotate CANNOT be called multiple times on the same plot. Calling a new figure, the example works fine.

[Nick Mariette]

Nice one. Just what I needed. Thanks Brian!

[Daniel Visser]

Hi! Cool stuff!
Unfortunately I Have the same problem as ander and bob with:
figure; boxplot(rand(2));
set(gca,'xtick',[1 2],'xticklabel',{'Tick1' 'Tick2'})
xticklabel_rotate()
%matlab version: 7.10
The error starts at line 160: set(gca,'units','pixel')!?! (Why does the change of unit change the axis size?)
Nevertheless: Thank you so far

[Julian]

Thanks very much, handy utility (I've not tried working it hard - seemed to do what I needed out of the box)

[Alecsander Eitan]

 

[Ian]

I got the following error when running just xticklable_rotate():
Warning: Error occurred while evaluating listener callback.
> In axis>LocSetLimits at 208
  In axis at 94
  In plotPhases3 at 46
??? Error using ==> set
Values must be finite and non-NaN

The function works fine when there is a single plot, maybe this is because I am using subplots?
I would really like if this function worked.

[Denzel Li]

XTICKLABEL_ROTATE is a wonderful tool. Thanks a lot for making it available. How ever, I had the same problem as mentioned by Theresa above, which results in figures hard to use for publish. I also described this issue in great detail on stackoverflow:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4763673/problem-or-bug-in-xticklabel-rotate-while-drawing-heatmap-and-rotating-xtick-labe

Please take a look and any suggestion will be highly appreciated.

[Lindsey]

??? Error using ==> xticklabel_rotate at 117
xticklabel_rotate : must have same number of elements in "XTick"
and "XTickLabel"

I have checked that I have 29 ticks and 29 labels

[Pratik Chhatbar]

it works!! will save a lot of my time!!! yay!!!!

[m s]

thanks a lot.

[Brian Katz]

It seems that the problem seen by Daniel Visser is related to the newer version of boxplot. I am not currently running v.2010 so I cannot examine this issue further at this time. Sorry.

[Brian Katz]

I have examine the issue mentioned by Denzel Li. I have tried to reproduce the errors mentioned with only small sucess. I have found an issue with the axis position being changed when y-labels are on the right, which I will look into. I do not get such notable misalignements as you have shown when I run the same examples, so I am not sur how to respond. Please verify that these issues exist when you PRINT the figure, and it is not a simple figure screen display issue.

The text boxes are created at the tick positions, in data units. They are middle aligned, there is not much more that can be done, but I am open to suggestions.

[Pepa]

 

[Corinne]

 

[Minli]

this helps a lot. thank you !!

[gda]

When I'm calling for xticklabel_rotate function I'm getting the error
??? Error using ==> xticklabel_rotate at 78
xticklabel_rotate : can not process, either xticklabel_rotate has already been run or
XTickLabel field has been erased

Can anyone help me? thanks

[Boi-Yee Liao]

 thank you

[Ziv]

just what i needed. few minor issues but got the hang of it in no time.
Ziv yekutieli