How does one make a scatter plot where x or y data are blank?

[djmac23]

I want to make several independent xy charts from data in one sheet, i.e.
col. A vs. B, col. C vs. D, etc. Question: must the values be in adjacent
columns with the abscissae in the left col.? More importantly, some of my x.y
pairs have a blank for one or the other, and the only way I can get a decent
plot is to first sort on the x values and plot that range, but that destroys
other plots I have made b/c their x values are now scrambled! I haven't
found a way around this or any help topic that addresses this. I'm running
Excel 2003 on a Solaris platform. Thanks.

 

[Shane Devenshire]

Hi,

First question: No
Second question: No
Third question: What do you mean by "decent plot"

You can always create formulas back to the data area which product a sorted
list withouth modifying the original data, then plot this. Example, if your
data is in A2:B5, then in a new range say F1 enter

=SMALL($A$2:$A$5,ROW(A1))

in G1 enter

=VLOOKUP(B11,$A$2:$B$5,2,FALSE)

Copy these down as needed and plot.

You may need fancier formulas depending on your data.