Date Format affecting y-intercept in a Trend Line Formula

Posted by Roger on December 19, 2000 1:35 PM

I am charting currency spent, on a rolling twelve month basis, where the X-axis is the month, and the y-axis is dollars spent. I am using the 'line with markers displayed at each data point' chart sub-type. In this I am including a trend line of the dollars spent.

My problem is that when the values in the x-axis are formatted dates Jan-00, Feb-00 etc. the y-intercept of the trendline formula is not correct. I can change to Jan,Feb,Mar.. and the trend formula is corrected. However I really need to have the Jan-00, Feb-00 format in my chart. Converting these to general or text gets into the Julien calculation.

Any suggestions?? Or is this just an Excel quirk I have to live with?

Posted by Kelvin on December 20, 2000 12:10 PM

Under "Chart Options", Primary (X) axis, did you select "Automatic", "Category" or "Time-scale". Try "Category" and see if that works.

Kelvin

Posted by Roger on January 02, 2001 7:16 AM

That was the ticket! Thanks!