excel plot against a date time x series

Question

Why does Excel ignore the time component of datetime values in a chart  For example  the following data    10 10 2010 9 30   1  10 10 2010 9 40   2 10 10 2010 9 50   3 10 10 2010 10 00  4  10 10 2010 10 10  5 10 10 2010 10 20  6   excel plots it all values on a same x-value 10 10 2010  If I format the values as time  it works fine  How do I tell excel to display datetime and interpret it as datetime not date

User · Answer

That was much more painful than it ought to have been.

It turns out there are two concepts, the format of the data and the format of the axis. You need to format the data series as a time, then you format the graph's display axis as date and time.

Graph your data

Highlight all columns and insert your graph

Format datetime cells

Select the column, right click, format cells. Select time so that the data is in time format.

Now format the axis

Now right click on the axis text and change it to display whatever format you want

User · Answer

There is an easy workaround for this problem  What you need to do  is format your dates as DD MM YYYY  or whichever way around you like   Insert a column next to the time and date columns  put a formula in this column that adds them together  e g   A5 B5   Format this inserted column into DD MM YYYY hh mm ss which can be found in the custom category on the formatting section  Plot a scatter graph   Badabing badaboom  If you are unhappy with this workaround  learn to use GNUplot

User · Answer

Try using an X-Y Scatter graph with datetime formatted as YYYY-MM-DD HH MM  This provides a reasonable graph for me  using Excel 2010

User · Answer

You will need to specify TimeSeries in Excel to be plotted   Have a look at this

User · Answer

There is one way to do this  as long as you have regular time intervals between all your date-time values - make the x-axis consider the values as text            in Excel 2007  click on the chart - Go to the layout menu  contextual menu on clicking on the chart    choose the option Axes- Primary Horizontal Axes-  More Horizontal Axes Options     Under Axis Type  choose  Text Axis

User · Answer

excel 2010  separate the date and time into separate columns and select both as X-Axis and data as graph series see http   www 79783 mrsite com USERIMAGES horizontal axis date and time2 xlsx

User · Answer

I know this is an old question  but I was struggling to do this with a time period over 2 hours  so this might help someone  Also  several of the answers don t actually plot against time  giving equal space whatever the duration  Firstly  as  jameswarren says  use a scatter graph  Then right-click the horizontal axis and choose Format Axis  Under Number  select Time  and at this point you may find your scale goes a bit crazy  because it chooses to scale the axis by days  So go back to Axis Options and select Fixed for the Minimum  Maximum and Major unit scales  To set the unit to hours  type in 1 24   0 0416667  I used half that to get half-hourly increments   To make this start at a round number  multiply it by your preferred number of hours and type that into the Minimum box  In my case 08 00   0 333333

[excel] excel plot against a date time x series

Graph your data

Format datetime cells

Now format the axis

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