On Sun, 27 Mar 2005, in microsoft.public.excel.charting,
Leesa said:

I am needing some help with how best to summarize and chart some raw data. I
extracted from an application we use that tracks appointments and dumped it
into excel. The columns I am interested in a
date
name
appt_start
appt_end

Each name is associated with 4-5 appointments for one date.
I am trying to see how much time is between appointments

May I suggest you add some extra columns

appt_num
appt_duration
next_appt

the first would be which appointment of the day that is for which
person, which you say is unlikely to be more than four appointments. You
can do it automatically with a combination of array formulas, IF(), and
RANK(), but it's probably better if you just add it by hand.

The second will be the difference between appt_start and appt_end. The
third is the time between two appointments, which is the difference
between appt_end of one appointment and appt_start of the next
appointment.

Finally, if you make a pivot chart to look like this (for one day)

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ++++++++++++++
+ Appt + 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 +
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ++++++++++++++
+ Name + dura + next + dura + next + dura + next + dura + next +
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ++++++++++++++
+ + + + + + + + + +
+ + + + + + + + + +

You should be able to make a stacked bar chart with the durations of
each appointment in a different colour, and the time to next appoint
with no colour at all, like a Gantt chart. Your database feeds the
pivot table and your pivot table feeds the chart, giving a visual
picture of the day with everyone's appointments lined up against each
other.

--
Del Cotter
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