Line Graph, Time vs Unit, with Data Points

[jgiampie]

I making a bar graph for a restaurant that has the hours of the day on the
Y-axis and delivery workers A through S on the X-axis. The bar for each
delivry worker begins with the first data point, the first delivery of the
day, through the last delivery of the day for that worker. There is a dot at
every data point showing when a delivery worker made the delivery.
The problem I am having is that the Rows in my spreadsheet (which correspond
to one worker) work with the data points up until 10 data points (10th
delivery of the day) but then will not graph any more points after the tenth
data point. I am hoping to figure out why excel is limiting me to 10 data
points in this circumstance.
Any ideas?

Thanks,
James

 

[Jon Peltier]

How are you adding points? Are the ten points in a contiguous range, or do
you have to use CTRL+Click to include them all?

If the data is not contiguous, change the data arrangement to make it so.

- Jon

 

[jgiampie]

The data are contiguous in my spreadsheet. When I put an eleventh data point
in the row, say the time 8:55 PM, rather than graphing that point, it graphs
a yellow triangle at the tip of the bar seeming to show the point past which
it won't graph any more points.

My data sheet looks like this:
Where the letter represents a worker and the time is when he made a delivery

A 4:42 PM 4:58 PM 5:21 PM 6:16 PM >> and
continue as such
B 11:39 AM 12:02 AM 12:19 AM 12:30AM
C --- and so on

but when I get past that 10th data point in the row and enter an eleventh or
twelfth point, it graphs a little yellow triangle at the tip of the line. It
seems as if it can't handle more than 10 points!
I'm wondering if there is some parameter somewhere that simply needs to be
changed.

I hope this makes the issue more clear.

Thanks in advance

____

 

[Jon Peltier]

It's a bar chart? I guess I don't see how your data is turned into chart
series.

- Jon

 

[Del Cotter]

It's a bar chart? I guess I don't see how your data is turned into chart
series.

I believe he's using the custom chart type "Line-Column on 2 Axes". Each
data point is a different series, and the tenth series is where it stops
being bars and starts being lines, and the eleventh series, the first
line series, does indeed have as its default format symbol a yellow
triangle.

James, since you are graphing point events (deliveries) in time rather
than the length of time since the start of the day, may I suggest you
abandon bars and simply go for points, in what William S. Cleveland
calls a "point graph"? You could use the wizard to create a point graph
the way you're doing it, by simply choosing chart type "Line Chart",
then formatting all the ranges to be the same symbol and no line.

This would be very inelegant, mind, as the underlying structure would be
a series for every point, with a limit of 255 points. If you decide to
go for this, then F4 would be your friend as you format the first series
and step through all subsequent ones pressing the F4 key to repeat the
last action.

There are ways to conserve series, but they require a bit of
sophistication, and, in a twist that may have come back to bite some of
us purists, the old gibe "there is no shortage of cells, you don't have
to conserve them!" can be adapted. That is, if you know your delivery
workers will never make 255 deliveries, we can say "there is no shortage
of series, you don't have to conserve them!"

(in any case, if your table runs from left to right, you'll run out of
spreadsheet columns before you get to 255 anyway)