Graphing Date Ranges in Excel

Question

Hi, I am having issues creating a chart of timelines in Excel. I am trying to create a chart that shows what months of the year that equipment were installed in the field. I would like the vertical y-axis to be the serial numbers of the equipment installed (about 30 serial numbers total) and I would like the horizontal x-axis to be the timeline (months Jan - Dec). I would like straight, horizontal lines indicating the date range that the equipment was installed.  This way it can be easily visually determined where we have overlapping data for each site (each site is linked to the serial number of the equipment). Below is a sketch of what I'm trying to accomplish. I was hoping a scatter plot with straight lines could accomplish this, but nothing charts when I input the data. I am also having the issue of the y-axis rounding and not displaying the exact numbers. Any assistance would be greatly appreciated! 

Answer 1

A stacked bar chart is one way to do it (more or less):

It's a bit fiddly to set it up. See the sample workbook at https://www.dropbox.com/s/tptvq23unbmsj2d/StackedBar.xlsx?dl=1