Chart with X-axis showing different intervals of time

Question

Is it possible in Microsoft Excel 2010 to create a chart with an x axis that has different interval values within the same chart? For example, a chart I am currently working with has data that come from spans of time that are weeks apart and months apart. For one year, the data was taken weekly, then the next year it was taken monthly, then it was taken weekly again. Is it possible to create a single chart that will show an x-axis with different intervals of time?

Thank you!

Answer 1

Hello

If you use a line chart, the X axis can be set to be a date/time axis, so dates that are far apart will plot accordingly.

The same applies to an XY scatter chart.

For a column chart, the X axis will always be a category axis and the columns will be evenly spaced.

Answer 2

You can convert x axis values to Text (Right click > Format Axis > Axis Type > Text) and see whether this helps in your scenario.

Answer 3

Thank you both very much for your responses. I've only just figured out what my real problem is, as I was misunderstanding the task given to me.

Okay, so my data not only has varying lengths of time, it also skips a period of 3 years. It goes something like this

8/8/2011

8/12/2011

8/26/2011

9/9/2011

9/23/2011

10/7/2011

11/4/2011

12/19/2011

1/20/2012 

7/17/2015

7/31/2015

8/7/2015

There are more dates from 2012 that I have omitted from this post for simplicity's sake, but as you can see, there is a large time gap from 2012 to 2015 where no measurements were recorded. When I plot the data on a line graph with a date/time axis, this happens:

The Graph automatically inserts the missing years (the shaded blue area), scrunching up the remaining data on the far right. My task was to figure out a way to remove the inserted years. The graph shown is on a date/time scale. If I change it to text, the dates change to one point for every 2 or 3 months and don't show the weekly changes to the data we would like to see.

So my real question is, is there a way to keep excel from inserting these missing years automatically? 

Thank you!

-Allie

Answer 4

I have already made the suggestion for this. You can convert x axis values to Text (Right click > Format Axis > Axis Type > Text) and see whether this helps in your scenario.

Answer 5

Huh, doing that on my computer actually gave me a different result than the graph that was given to me previously when someone else printed it out and had converted the x-axis to text. Perhaps they have an earlier or non-updated version of Excel and I didn't think about that.

Thank you!

Another question, the relative spacing of the data on the right, can that be changed so the points are closer together? That data is set in a period of weeks and is spaced exactly the same as the points that are spaced in months. The problem I have when I click the line is that it is read as being the same line throughout the graph, rather than two separate lines. If I wanted to change this, I'm thinking I'm going to have to perhaps make two separate graphs and put them together. Am I correct?