It's a fair question, and the frustration is entirely understandable. When you're on a Mac and the usual handles aren't showing up, resizing a graph without turning the text into a squished, unreadable mess feels like a dead end. But here's the thing: the problem isn't your Mac, and it isn't you. It's that spreadsheet tools often hide their most useful functions behind assumptions about how you're trying to interact with them. The absence of a visible plus sign or the failure of the shift key doesn't mean the capability isn't there. It means the method is different, and that difference is rarely explained well.
What you're running into is the distinction between scaling the entire object and adjusting the plot area within it. When you grab the outer corners of a chart on a Mac, the default behavior can be tied to the object's frame, not the text inside it. The shift key is supposed to lock aspect ratio, but if the software isn't recognizing that gesture in this context, you're left with a distorted visual. The practical workaround is to look for the chart's inner boundaries, specifically the plot area, which is the region that contains the data visualization itself. Clicking directly on that area often reveals separate handles that let you resize the graph independently of the labels and axis text. This is the difference between stretching the canvas and adjusting the picture on it. One preserves proportion; the other destroys it.
The deeper issue here is that this kind of friction is exactly why people abandon traditional spreadsheet tools for more intuitive alternatives. You shouldn't need a Reddit thread to figure out how to perform a basic visual adjustment. The fact that you're on a Mac and the expected shortcuts don't work points to a broader inconsistency in how these applications handle cross-platform input. It's not that the feature is missing. It's that the interface fails to communicate the alternate path. For anyone who's tried and failed to make this work, the lesson is simple: stop fighting the outer edges of the chart and start looking at the plot area as a separate, resizable element. That single mental shift solves the problem more often than any keyboard shortcut.
What this means for you is that the solution isn't a secret key combination or a hidden menu. It's a change in approach. On a Mac, click the chart once to select it, then click again directly on the plot area inside the graph. You should see handles appear around that inner region. Dragging those will resize the graph while keeping the text in place, because you're no longer scaling the entire object. If that still doesn't work, check the Format Panel on the right side of your screen. Look for the "Size & Properties" tab, where you can manually input exact dimensions for the plot area. This gives you precise control without relying on guesswork or finicky mouse movements. That's the concrete fix. Try it, and you'll find that the graph resizes cleanly, with text staying exactly where it belongs.