chart problem (dates are all messed up) please help!

[moonlit]

I'm helping my brother with a presentation for school. The problem is when I enter the dates in the form they are ok but when I create the chart it makes all these strange dates. I'm including two screenshots to show you what I mean. I'm using openoffice which is the same as Microsoft Excel & I've also tried creating the chart in Excel and it does the same thing. What is going on here?

http://www.digital-overload.org/3eb/problem.jpg

http://www.digital-overload.org/3eb/problem2.jpg

 

[Anne Troy]

What happens when you open that file on another PC?

 

[moonlit]

It shows the same info. :x

 

[tactps]

Welcome.

Try formatting the cells containing the dates as text.

 

[moonlit]

Hmmm that helped a little but now it's saying 0.1, 0.2, 0.3... across the y axis.

 

[tactps]

Double click on the y-axis, click on the "number tab" and put in the custom format:

mmm d, yyyy

See how this goes.

 

[moonlit]

Nope, still didn't work

 

[tactps]

Ok.

Reset the data to the date format you had, and then update the y-axis format.

If this doesn't work, then redo the graph via the chart wizard.

Let me knwo how it goes.

 

[Jon von der Heyden]

Write this formula in C2 and paste downward:

=TEXT(B2,"MMM DD, YYY")

Update the graph to read this column. Does it work?

 

[PaddyD]

1) excel usually treats the leftmost column of data as the x axis values, so swap your columns over if you want dates along the bottom
2) only the xy scatter treats x axis items as values (eg dates) - bar charts etc interpret them as categories (ie you wont get them plotted to scale)
3) your "measurements" are not being held as numbers & so wont get charted properly.