If Excel recognizes the data as dates, you will automatically get a
Date-Scale axis, and the horizontal spacing will be proportional to the
elapsed time between measurements.

When you double click on the X axis, under the Scale tab, does it say "Time
(X) Axis Scale"? If not, you don't have a Time Scale axis. To fix, first
examine the data. Select a cell with a date. No matter the format, if Excel
knows it's a date, the formula bar will display it in this format: 1/1/2006.
If it is not displayed this way, you need to re-enter the data or try to get
Excel to recognize it. Make sure the cells are formatted as something
numeric, preferably a date format. There are at least two ways to convert
the cells to an Excel date. 1: copy a blank cell, select the cells to
convert, from the Edit menu, use Paste Special with the Operation - Add
option. 2: select the cells, on the Data menu select Text to Columns, choose
either delimited or fixed width, and make sure the items aren't split, and
in step 3 choose the Date column format.

If the dates are okay, select the chart, choose Chart Options on the Chart
menu, and on the Axes tab, under Category Axis, choose Time-Scale.

If you have a date axis, double click on it, make sure the Base Unit is in
Day(s), and set other appropriate limits.

- Jon
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Jon Peltier, Microsoft Excel MVP
Peltier Technical Services
Tutorials and Custom Solutions
http://PeltierTech.com/
_______

"Sally" wrote in message
...
Hi, I have created a line chart where the x-column is dates and the other
column (y-axis) is my data. However, the data is not put into this second
column at regular intervals - I might go for, say, a month without
entering any data, but then again I may go through a few weeks where I am
entering data every day.

This problem isn't really urgent to me as my line chart works fine, but
just as a bonus I would like to see the data displayed proportionately
over time (for example if difference between the 1st data point and last
data point was exactly one year, I would like the midpoint of the graph to
be 6 months). I have tried changing the options and reading the books etc
but haven't had any joy so far.

Any help appreciated,

Sally