Time scale chart

[George Wilson]

I am using Excel 2000 on a Windows 2000 OS.I am using a
scatter chart set up on a time scale. The dates are at
irregular intervals and some days have many plots, some
have no plots. I manually set the the axis scale to the
starting and ending points but the scatter data plots
nowhere near the corresponding time scale date. Is there a
certain option I need to select to get the data to view
properly? Curently the axis time scale labels look like I
think they should but all the data seems to be bunched up
at the beginning of the chart and not going past the first
few months. Any suggestions what may be happening here?
George

 

[Jon Peltier]

George -

If you use a line chart with a time scale axis, all points for a given
day are plotted at midnight at the start of the day, regardless of the time.

If you have an XY chart, with time/date across the bottom, the times
will be plotted correctly, but if you've added a series and the actual
time/date isn't recognized as time/dates (i.e., it's text, or there is
no X Values range defined), the values will chart as if X were 1, 2, 3,
4, 5, ....

Right click the chart, choose Source Data from the pop up menu, click on
the Series tab, select a series, and see what's in the XValues (or
Categories) box. If it's blank, select your range of cells. If it
isn't blank, check whether the range is filled with values, or whether
Excel thinks they're text categories without numerical value. Select
one of the cells, press Ctrl-1 (numeral one) to format it, click the
Alignment tab, and change Horizontal to General. If the cell isn't
right-justified, it isn't numerical.

- Jon

 

[George Wilson]

The data was listed as date format, I changed it to
general format and all appears to be working properly.
Thank you for your assistance
George