Forum Discussion
Regular ticks for X-axis when data is irregular
Thanks very much.
But I still can't get it to work the way I want it. When I change the chart type to "X Y (Scatter), the X-axis labels are no longer dates. Now they're numbers, corresponding to the number of points to be charted. I have about 220 data pairs (date & value), in 220 rows, and the X-axis labels go from 1 to 220, by 5's (5, 10, 15, 20, ..., 220).
What I'm aiming for is to get the X-values to show dates, rather than numbers. The X-axis values would be something like:
6/1/2019
7/1/2019
8/1/2019
...
1/1/2021
2/1/2021
OraMcCreary My guess is that some or all of your "dates" are really text. In the attached is an example showing how it will automatically use dates (note: the x axis is actually in days with the x-axis number format set to date. This is why the tick marks are not like 2/1/19, 4/1/19, 6/1/19 but instead actual even intervals based on # of days)
Since you haven't attached a sample file I would just recommend checking the date column to make sure all those values are actually dates. I hope that helps.
You're right.
I just looked closely at the date column. One of the dates was ".7/1/19" - which of course is text. I had to look carefully at all the values, and didn't notice that one it till I looked closely.
Another funny date was more difficult. My date column had several dates looking like this:
2-Dec-19
4-Dec-19
5-Dec-19
I looked carefully at the underlying values and discovered this
12/2/2019
12/4/2119 <-- !!
12/5/2019
That stray date in the next century made for a funny-looking chart!
You've been very helpful. I still have some fiddling to see if I can get exactly the format I want, but you gave me the clue to fix the main problem. Thank you!