Standardizing date scale in a scatter plot

[Guest]

Hello,

I'm making scatter plots of measurements taken on certain dates. The source
data is in two columns, one with MDY text-formatted dates, and one with
numbers.

I need to standardize the X-axis (date) so that my major gridlines cross on
the same day every year as I plot over many years, but I can't do this in
scatter plot because dates are stored as serial numbers and my axis becomes
offset when leap leap years come into play.

Interestingly, this isn't a problem when I use line charts. In Line charts,
excel handles dates on the x-axis in MDY format, and will allow me to set
intervals as months or years as oppose to an arbitrary number of days. But
line charts aren't as desirable because I can't graph more than one
independent series of points (it forces all series to graph along the same
x-values).

So can I have my cake and eat it too? Can I get standard dates in a scatter
plot?

(or even if I could get different x-values in line plots would be helpful too)

Thanks,
Morgs

 

[Jon Peltier]

So can I have my cake and eat it too?

Sure: Create the chart as a line chart to get the nice date scale axis.
Convert series 2 and up to XY series (select the series, Chart menu > Chart
Type), then assign each XY series to the primary axis (double click series,
Axis tab > Primary).

- Jon