Charts - problem using stacked bar chart with dates

Question

I have a list of company names in column A and in columns B-F their year ends over 5 years.  I am trying to produce a chart to show in picture format all the companies with their fiscal years as a stacked horizontal bar chart to show the overlaps between their respective year ends, each year in a different colour.  However, my charts are showing random date labels not even in arithmetic order.  There is hardly any difference between the bars produced for March and October year ends, whereas they should be only 50% overlap.  I am completely stumped as to why this should be happening, let alone how to fix it.

Answer 1

Hi,

Try this

1. Right click in the x-axis labels and select Format Axis
2. Under Axis Type, select Text Axis

Does this help?

Answer 2

Hi,

Uploaded an Excel file with some sample data along with a chart that shows the look I am trying to achieve, but that does it in a convoluted and highly imperfect way.

Ideally, I 'd like to be able to create a (stacked bar?) chart linked to this data, i.e. list of company names and for each company four dates, so that I can visualise anomalies in the dates, each of which is a period end.  For example, to see non-12 month periods or non-co-terminous/non-consecutive periods.

File should be discoverable here:

https://skydrive.live.com/redir.aspx?cid=0769d5c5e4128f18&resid=769D5C5E4128F18!124&parid=root

Thanks for your help,

Barry

Answer 3

Hi,

Thanks for the suggestion.  I tried this but, for the x-axis, that option is not in the menu you suggest.  It is there for the y-axis, though.

Any other ideas?

Thanks,

Barry

Answer 4

Upload sample data to SkyDrive so we can help you better in regards to this issue. Refer to the link below which talks about how to upload sample data on SkyDrive.

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w7itproui/thread/4fc10639-02db-4665-993a-08d865088d65