Chart formatting problems (multiple)

[WhiskyCast]

Using Excel 2007, and having problems with simple column graphs. The first
half of my data points align properly with the gridlines along the Y axis,
but halfway through, they move consistently to the right of the gridlines for
the rest of the series. What's worse, no matter what column chart style I
select, all I get is a bold vertical line with no shading or 3D appearance
(it will pick up the color from the style I select).

I've posted a .pdf showing what I'm talking about at
www.caskstrengthmedia.com/ExcelHelp.pdf -- hope this may help explain my
problem.

Any suggestions?

Thanks!

 

[Ed Ferrero]

Hi WhiskyCast,

A couple of guesses;

Format the cells containing the 'months' to dd-mmm-yy. Do you have months
starting on different days?

Right-click the series. Choose 'Format data Series' from the context menu.
Use the Gap width slider to make the gap between columns smaller.

Ed Ferrero
www.edferrero.com

 

[WhiskyCast]

Sorry...neither trick worked. Tried the "Format Data Series" command many
times, but nothing seems to help.

Thanks for trying!

Mark

 

[Jon Peltier]

Your data comes once a week, right? A date scale axis with a base unit
of days has room for one data point (column) per day, so weekly data has
one skinny column and six skinny blank slots per week.

You could change the axis to a text style.

- Jon

 

[Jon Peltier]

Once a month data is even worse than once a week. However, one of the
Base Unit settings for a date scale axis is Monthly, which should fix
your chart. There is also Daily, but not Weekly.

Make the chart 2D too, so it looks nicer and doesn't distort the values.

- Jon