Forum Discussion
Scale y-axis on line chart when the data is dates
I am trying to create a chart with dates on both axes. The x-axis is years (e.g. 1975, 1976...) the y-axis is the date of ice-out on an area lake (e.g. May 4, 1975, April 25, 1976...). What I want is for the y-axis to scale from 1-Mar to 31-May. What Excel is giving me on the y-axis is 0-Jan to 21-Nov. I have no idea where is it getting this scale because every data point falls between 1-Mar and 31-May. Example is what I am getting compared to what I want. Thank you for any help - I've been struggling for hours!
Example
I think in your y-axis, you need to make "YEAR" the same for all dd-MMM.
e.g, if your y-axis ranges from 1930-03-01 to 2020-11-05, excel line chart will automatically make the minimum value 1900-01-01.
However, if you make your y-axis range from 2024-03-01 to 2024-11-05, excel line chart will then automatically make the minimum value 01 Mar 2024, maximum value 05 Nov 2024, you can format it as 01 Mar to 05 Nov. (that is, omit the year).
I attached an example sheet to show how to fix this:
- Thank you. I'll give that a try. I've found several additional examples of ice-out charts from USGS and universities, so I'd begun to think they were done with statistics software, not Excel.
