How do I plot "Month, Year" on the x-axis for prior to 1900?

[Guest]

I was hoping this would be easier in the latest Excel, but I had the same
problem with the other versions. The date system seems to begin at 1900 and
doesn't recongnize dates prior to that. In my field, I have data that goes
back several decades before 1900.
Also, I would like the date to show up on the x-axis as "Month, Year" and I
would like to have the option of displaying the data in my chart from a
specified minimum and maximum date without having to change the selection of
my source data (I know I can do this if the x-axis is just numbers instead of
dates, but I want to do it for my date plots).

Thanks

 

[Guest]

Can't help with the dates prior to 1900 other than suggest that you insert
them as text. However as you say you have latest Excel, if you right click
the labels on the axis you have a multitude of options to format it. Check
out both on the left side of the dialog box and the right side. You can even
set the dates between as you want.

Regards,

OssieMac

 

[Jon Peltier]

Excel 2007 has very few charting advantages over prior versions. The issue
is that dates are stored as the number of days after 1-Jan-1900, and the
standard date scheme does not allow negative dates. You could switch to the
1904 date scheme (look somewhere in the Excel Options hierarchy), which
handles dates prior to 1900. Or you could enter all of the dates as text and
use a plain category axis (the date-scale axis will not work with text
labels). You can still do dynamic chart ranges even if the X values are text
labels.

- Jon