Forum Discussion
MaryA1615
Mar 17, 2024Copper Contributor
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...
rachel
Mar 17, 2024Iron Contributor
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:
- MaryA1615Mar 19, 2024Copper ContributorThank 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.