ExcelBanter - Problems creating a line chart or scatter graph

On Wed, 2 Apr 2008, in microsoft.public.excel.charting,
Natty said:

I have the following data,

Newspaper - FT, Mirror, Sun
Sector - Gambling, Healthcare, Retail
Date range by month - Jan, Feb, March etc.

I would like to show how many articles were written by each newspaper in
each sector on a timeline but have no idea how to order my data in otder for
this to happen. Anyone able to advise?

You're setting the chart quite a difficult task, to show time and
quantity in two orthogonal sets of category, which is four degrees of
freedom no a two-dimensional page.

There are many ways to skin this cat; Try "Excel panel-chart" or "Excel
small-multiple" in a search engine. Or for a simpler solution, format
your data like this:

Gambling Health Retail
FT 999 999 999
Jan Mirror 999 999 999
Sun 999 999 999

FT 999 999 999
Feb Mirror 999 999 999
Sun 999 999 999

FT 999 999 999
Mar Mirror 999 999 999
Sun 999 999 999

or like this:

FT Mirror Sun
Gambling 999 999 999
Jan Health 999 999 999
Retail 999 999 999

Gambling 999 999 999
Feb Health 999 999 999
Retail 999 999 999

Gambling 999 999 999
Mar Health 999 999 999
Retail 999 999 999

and make a stacked bar chart. (be sure to make the fonts small and the
graph big to give the labels room to display).

Stacked bars are sometimes frowned on by more sophisticated makers of
graphs, but it'll get you a graphical result quickly, and you can decide
if you want something cleverer then.

--
Del Cotter
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which goes to a spam folder-- please send your email to del3 instead.