Excel (2007) won't do a particular X-Y (Point) graph for me..

[Ake]

Hi,

Well, Excel _does_ X-Y graphs, but not this one.
I have, in the columns A, B, G, and E from row 7 to 5175, sequential time,
data, and data (and dummy data) , respectively.
When I make an X-Y plot using the time column for the X-axis, it plots as
expected.
But when I plot column B versus column D, I get column B on the Y-axis, and
the (relative?) row number on the X-axis. (There are gaps in the data, but
any gaps plot alright in a smaller data sub set, even if they are not
matched).
My workaround consists of plotting B versus D and E, and then remove E ;-)
Somehow it seems Excel won't make a proper X-Y plot properly if just two
columns are given. (because of the large number of rows? and/or the gaps,
and/or because the E column had no gaps)

Can anybody explain?

Best regards / Ake

 

[Ake]

Sorry, my "workaround" was a red herring. The problem remains... some data
sets still won't plot as X-Y/ Ake

 

[Jon Peltier]

If the data in the X range are not numeric (even if only one is not
numeric), then Excel will treat the values as labels, and use the counting
numbers 1, 2, 3, etc. as X values. If your blanks are "" returned by a
formula, you should know that "" is a piece of text, not a blank, and is
either treated as a zero or treated as a non-numeric X value.

- Jon

 

[Ake]

Thanks a lot Jon,

That's it. I did not realize that "" is in fact a string. And I did my small
data set testing using "no data" instead of "" which I thought meant the same
thing. So I got confused by the results.

So, how should I actually do IF(Condition;Something;"") then?
The reason I use it is that it works well on the Y-data, and that the table
I plot from looks "as clean as it is" (I don't want to fill all empty cells
with "########").

Is there a workaround, or even some way to force the plot to "think right".

Thank's again for clearing this up / Ake

 

[Ake]

Yes, you are right. But that solves the plotting problem only- but it still
does show up as irritating (to me ;-) text in the table, rather than "empty
space". /Ake

 

[David Biddulph]

You can deal with the "irritating ... text" in the table by conditional
formatting, colouring the font white (or your cell's background colour) if
the cell satisfies the CF condition/ Formula is/ =ISNA(A1)

 

[Ake]

Yes thank you, that does the job. I still think that MS should consider a way
to imprint "Empty" in a cell from a formula, now that "" does not do that. /
Ake

 

[Jon Peltier]

"" has never done that. We have asked for such a BLANK() or NULL() function,
but have never seen such.

- Jon

 

[Ake]

Would it really upset the VB syntax that much if "" was considered as empty
as if no characters at all had been entered?

/ Ã…ke

 

[Jon Peltier]

That's the way it is.

- Jon