Basic XY graph, date is always an issue?

[my8950]

Hello, I have always had trouble trying to get specific dates to show as my X-axis.
I have the dates that I want to show in my data, but when I grab them by using a line graph, or scatter plot, Excel always fills in the gaps with other dates which are in between.
I don't want these dates, only the dates in my data.
I've uploaded a basic screen shot to show what I am talking about.
Such a simple situation, but I always have trouble trying to make this happen.
I'd be fine with the X-axis being 4 points and I'll add to this as time progresses.

Suggestions?

Thank you!

 

[KRice]

You might consider the work around described here:

Excel: making a chart with non-evenly spaced years on the x-axis

I have data in Excel that looks like this: Year 1857 1869 1880 1890... Population 1970 2328 2556 3171... As you can see, the years aren't equally spaced, and I w...

superuser.com

Basically, you create a second data series consisting of your preferred labels. Delete the x-axis labels from your original plot, and then plot that second series (x vs. y...or "original x" vs. "new data labels in the Helper column"). Then format this second data series by deleting the markers (so that they don't show along the x-axis), and then position the data labels below the points with the desired alignment/rotation.

MrExcel20210312.xlsx
	A	B	C
1			Helper
2	2/1/2021	50	2/1/2021
3	2/25/2021	90.91	2/25/2021
4	3/10/2021	93.39
5	3/11/2021	89.92	3/11/2021
Sheet4

 

[my8950]

You might consider the work around described here:

Excel: making a chart with non-evenly spaced years on the x-axis

I have data in Excel that looks like this: Year 1857 1869 1880 1890... Population 1970 2328 2556 3171... As you can see, the years aren't equally spaced, and I w...

superuser.com

Basically, you create a second data series consisting of your preferred labels. Delete the x-axis labels from your original plot, and then plot that second series (x vs. y...or "original x" vs. "new data labels in the Helper column"). Then format this second data series by deleting the markers (so that they don't show along the x-axis), and then position the data labels below the points with the desired alignment/rotation.

MrExcel20210312.xlsx
	A	B	C
1			Helper
2	2/1/2021	50	2/1/2021
3	2/25/2021	90.91	2/25/2021
4	3/10/2021	93.39
5	3/11/2021	89.92	3/11/2021
Sheet4

View attachment 34244

Creative! Thanks for that, if I can't figure out a Plan A, I'll try this out. I did make some progress, but it ended up mashing all the dates so close to each other they can't be read.

 

[KRice]

I'm happy to at least offer an idea. It's not ideal, but I'm not aware of a more direct way to do it in Excel. I tried adding a data point, and was disappointed with the level of effort needed to clean up the plot. First, to facilitate the creation of the labels in the helper column, I entered this in C2 and copied down: =TEXT(A2,"mm/dd/yyyy")
Then delete the unwanted data label entries (in this case, the one for 3/10/2021). By converting the dates to text in the Helper column, Excel plots them as having y values of 0 (which is what you want), but then it replots the 2nd data series and turns on the data point markers (see the orange marker points along the x-axis). Then I noticed that the new data point label for 4/23/2021 did not appear. To fix that, one needs to right click on the 2nd data series (orange points) or the 2nd data series labels and select Format Data Labels...then confirm that Value from Cells is Checked, and finally click on the Select Range button beside that option. Doing so will open a new window where the range can be adjusted. You'll see in my screen shot that the range is shown as C2:C5 and it needs to be C2:C6...so it appears that the data labels range may need to be manually adjusted this way when new points are added. Finally, format the 2nd data series by turning off the Markers...giving the final result shown further below.

I'm curious to learn if there is a better way. Good luck!

............

 

[my8950]

I'm happy to at least offer an idea. It's not ideal, but I'm not aware of a more direct way to do it in Excel.

I'm curious to learn if there is a better way. Good luck!
..........

I appreciate your information! I was actually able to do this many years ago, my issue is I mess with it and eventually figure it out, but since I don't do it often, I forget how I did in the past. I have a excel sheet saved with it doing the way I want, except I can't backtrack/reverse engineer it enough to figure out what I did. Something to do with a line graph, then selecting the X-axis as the dates, but it's not working this time around, so that is my reason why I asked here for help. If I can figure it out I'll definitely post up how I did, at least in the future when I try to do this again, I can search my previous posts and find my notes...