H Jason,
Excel's bar charts have the bars running horizontally. When you say you
want the actual and budget data "along side each other", you are
implying that you want the bars running vertically, which would be a
column chart.
I'm going to assume you actually want a column chart.
I'm also going to assume that your data consists of 3 columns; Date,
Actual and Budget in that order across the sheet.
1. Select your three columns, including the headings.
2. Click on the Chart wizard icon or go Insert>Chart
3. The Column chart is already highlighted in the dialog and the side
by side arrangement of columns is also already highlighted so just
click Next unless you prefer one of the 3-D versions shown below.
4. Make sure Columns is selected on the Data Range tab where it says
Series in:, then click Next.
5.This step has a lot of options such as Title, Axes labels, grid lines
etc so just experiment or just click Next because these options can be
adjusted later.
6.This step is where you can have the chart on the worksheet or as a
separate Chart sheet.
7. If you are not happy with spacing of the columns just double click a
column, select the Options tab and adjust the Gap and /or Overlap.
Ken Johnson
