Yes, once I plotted the columns, I had to change the x-axis base unit to 1
year to make it look half-way decent. That made all of my other points plot
vertically directly above the middle of the year, instead of on the specific
dates like I wanted.
It was the best I could do in the end.


"Jon Peltier" wrote:

The widest your columns can be in this circumstance is as wide as one
day. Even if your data is sparse, Excel's time scale axis reserves a
space for every day.

Something else you can try to improve the appearance of these skinny
columns: format the columns with a darker fill color and no border.

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

kraymond wrote:

Thanks, it worked. I thought I had tried that and failed, but it worked fine
this time as long as my time axis wasn't too long.

"Barb Reinhardt" wrote:


You can change the bar width. Double click on the series to get to Format
Data Series. Select the Options tab and change the gap width to 0 to have
no gap between the cells.
"kraymond" wrote in message
...

I need to make a combination graph with a time x-axis and two series: 3
columns at X = 1988, 1995, and 1999; and a set of X-Y points with date
(1/1/1980, etc.) as X. So far, I cannot make the columns appear on the

axis

at the correct location within the time x axis, whether I use line or

scatter

for my other series. The columns are just plotted equally spaced from

each

other, ignoring the x-axis, or if I make sure that their x-axis is time,

then

they plot as very skinny vertical lines at the correct places. Is there

any

way of getting around this without using yearly averages for my x-y

scatter

data?

Example:

Point data:
Date Value
1/1/1980 .5
2/5/1980 .1
5/1/1988 .6
10/7/1990 .4
12/1/1995 .1
12/1/1996 .2
3/10/1999 .3

Column data:
1988 30
1995 40
1999 70