

Follow the steps above to open Axis Options to set your x-axis to Date Axis if Excel’s default chart does not do so. If AB represented bank account withdrawals, you can more easily see in AB-Date that more transactions take place in the middle and end of the month. To follow using our example, download excel time chart.xlsx, Line Charts SheetĪB–Text shows the x-axis set to Text axis and the data points are equally spaced across the chart, even though the dates are not even throughout the month.ĪB–Date shows the x-axis set to Date axis and the data points are further or closer together based on when the data was recording during the month. This means that each data point will be plotted on the x-axis based on linear time, rather than equal distance from each other. When you are creating a line, column or bar chart, Excel will automatically treat date data as a “Date axis”. The results are a clean, uncluttered chart that plots series data evenly and clearly across a 24 hour period. In this example, we wanted our unit markers to appear every hour and the chart covered 24 hours of data. You may have to play with the Units settings to get your scale to show the time increments you want.


Here are some tips for editing time and date data in an Excel chart. When you have data that involves time information, you may need some special tricks to get Excel to help you create useful charts. By Tepring Crocker Categories: Basic Excel Tags: Excel Time Chart
