What chart type do I want in Excel?

[TonyHetherington]

Hi all

I'm non too shabby on Excel, but I'm a little stumped with this one. It's the planning that I can't quite get my head around - it's going to be very simple, I'm sure, but just can't see it.

I have a list of about 100 (non-evenly spaced) dates. And I want to show them pictorially, just to give an idea of spread and where big groups lie etc. I thought a scatter graph is what I would need, however there needs to be two axis of values of course. I tried giving notional values but this didn't seem to work, whereas it has worked well for other charts I've made.

Is there a chart type that caters for what I'm after?


Thanks all
a slightly puzzled, Tony

[crmcatee]

Tony

Make your own...

[RizzoTheRat]

Use the histogram function to group them and show a count of the number that occour in week or month bands?

[TonyHetherington]

RizzoTheRat said:

Use the histogram function to group them and show a count of the number that occour in week or month bands?

I've already got a pivot table running that accumulates all that stuff. Why on earth have I not played with the pivot chart though, what a plank, hang on let me have a go with that....!

[TonyHetherington]

Sussed it. It was this annoying thing where I'd copied and pasted the dates from another location, and even though the cell was formatted as date, excel didn't recognise " 9 April 2010 " as a date, just as data. Entering the cell and pushing enter (i.e. submitting it) then made Excel realise it was a date, converting it to 9/4/2010 and so my scatter chart then worked

[andyps]

Slightly OT but my advice with Excel charts depends upon whether the data you are wanting to show is going to be received favourably or not. If it is favourable then a nice simple chart which shows it well is best. However, if it is a bad set of results you want to disguise then something like a surface chart is best to use!