Hi,

Rather than shapes use a combination chart. An additional series plotted as
column chart is probably the simplest solution.
See Jon's example of vertical bands which should give you a starting point.

http://peltiertech.com/Excel/Charts/...ticalBand.html

If not post back with details of x-axis values. Dates or numbers?

Cheers
Andy
--

Andy Pope, Microsoft MVP - Excel
http://www.andypope.info
"Rebecca R" <Rebecca wrote in message
...
I have an XY scatter plot of temperature inside an office building
throughout
different times of day across a 3 week period. What I would like to see
are
coloured bars that highlight when the office is open (operating hours).

I tried adding colour-filled rectangles with 50% transparency, but I am
having printing issues. It looks fine on screen, but when I go to print
the
bars are scaled differently than the chart thus they don't line up
properly.
I think this might be a bug in Excel. This issue comes and goes; sometimes
it
prints OK, most of the time it doesn't (and I haven't changed any
settings!)

Is there a better way to do this? I must admit, using the coloured-bars is
very tedious. If there is a more elegant way to colour-code the chart
then I
am all for it!

Thanks,

Rebecca