Monthly Comparison By Year

[Jerry]

Is there a way to make a chart that compares the two same months of
different years worth of data?

For example, my spreadsheet has the date starting with January 2007 -
June 2008 as the header listed in order. I have some charts built off
of that but would like a bar chart that also lets me compare Jan 07
next to Jan 08, Feb 07 next to Feb 08, and so on.

Any ideas?

 

[Del Cotter]

Is there a way to make a chart that compares the two same months of
different years worth of data?

Try this page

http://processtrends.com/pg_charts_monthly_cycle_chart.htm

Or Google "excel cycle-plot"

http://www.google.com/search?q=excel+cycle=plot

 

[Jon Peltier]

An alternative is to arrange your data so that you have months in rows and
years in columns:

2007 2008
Jan data data
Feb data data
Mar data data
Apr data data
etc.

You can do this manually or using a pivot table. If using a pivot table, use
date as a row field, group date by month and year, then drag the year field
to the columns area. I show how to accomplish this in more detail in my
blog:

http://peltiertech.com/WordPress/2008/06/11/grouping-by-date-in-a-pivot-table/

- Jon