I have lots of data to be plotted and when I choose a marker to be
displayed, the resultant line just looks like a thicker line. You can't
individually pick out the marker being used. Without messing with the input
data, is there any way to get Excel to place a marker every 10th or 20th
data point instead of every data point?

I still want the line to plot the entire data. And I don't want to have to
manipulate my source data. If I only plot every 10th data point, I may miss
peaks that occur between the 10th points. And it's too cumbersome to pick
the data by hand out of the hundreds of data points.

I want to continue to use markers instead of colors or dashed lines to
differential my graphed lines.

Smaller symbols won't help since the data is so closely plotted together.

Is there some easy solution to this?

Thanks.

You can achieve the required result by plotting every tenth (for example)
data point
Suppose the y-values are in B2:B1001 with label in B1
In C2 enter =IF(MOD(row(),10)=0,B2,NA())
Copy down to C1001
Select the x-values (A1:A1001), hold CTRL and select the new y-values
(C1:C1002) and make the chart
best wishes
--
Bernard V Liengme
www.stfx.ca/people/bliengme
remove caps from email

"denzel" wrote in message
...
I have lots of data to be plotted and when I choose a marker to be
displayed, the resultant line just looks like a thicker line. You can't
individually pick out the marker being used. Without messing with the
input data, is there any way to get Excel to place a marker every 10th or
20th data point instead of every data point?

I still want the line to plot the entire data. And I don't want to have
to manipulate my source data. If I only plot every 10th data point, I may
miss peaks that occur between the 10th points. And it's too cumbersome to
pick the data by hand out of the hundreds of data points.

I want to continue to use markers instead of colors or dashed lines to
differential my graphed lines.

Smaller symbols won't help since the data is so closely plotted together.

Is there some easy solution to this?

Thanks.

Nope, as stated in my original post, I can't get by with only plotting every
10 data points because I won't be graphing all the points of interest (e.g.,
a peak may occur at point 25 and it wouldn't show on the graph). And I
don't want to hand pick each one I need.

I'm looking at doing this without manipulating my source data.

I could do what you suggest and plot the original data as a line with no
markers and then plot the new data with markers and no lines, but then my
legend would have an additional entry for just the marker graph, and the
original entry in the legend wouldn't be represented correctly (no marker).

I could manually add a few markers by hand, but then if my data were to
change, the markers wouldn't necessary be on the new line (and Excel has a
problem with printing objects in the same location as shown on the screen.

So I'm looking for more of a automatic way of doing this.


"Bernard Liengme" wrote in message
...
You can achieve the required result by plotting every tenth (for example)
data point
Suppose the y-values are in B2:B1001 with label in B1
In C2 enter =IF(MOD(row(),10)=0,B2,NA())
Copy down to C1001
Select the x-values (A1:A1001), hold CTRL and select the new y-values
(C1:C1002) and make the chart
best wishes
--
Bernard V Liengme
www.stfx.ca/people/bliengme
remove caps from email

"denzel" wrote in message
...
I have lots of data to be plotted and when I choose a marker to be
displayed, the resultant line just looks like a thicker line. You can't
individually pick out the marker being used. Without messing with the
input data, is there any way to get Excel to place a marker every 10th or
20th data point instead of every data point?

I still want the line to plot the entire data. And I don't want to have
to manipulate my source data. If I only plot every 10th data point, I
may miss peaks that occur between the 10th points. And it's too
cumbersome to pick the data by hand out of the hundreds of data points.

I want to continue to use markers instead of colors or dashed lines to
differential my graphed lines.

Smaller symbols won't help since the data is so closely plotted together.

Is there some easy solution to this?

Thanks.