1. To keep it in time format, make sure you enter the times into the
cells in H:MM:SS format (or H:MM). If you enter M:SS, Excel's going to
interpret it as H:MM. You'll have a column with names and the next
column with times. Put a label above the Time column ("Time"), but leave
the cell above the names blank, to help Excel interpret your data.
Select all this data and make a chart. Line, Bar, or Column, your
choice. Choose the Series in Columns option in Step 2. The Value axis
retains the time format, 0:00:00, but the units are strange (in my
example, each tick was 46 seconds above the next). To get more pleasing
axis scale parameters, double click on the axis, and click on the scale
tab. You'll notice some small decimal fractions in the boxes, which
explain the funny spacing: 46 seconds = 0.0005 days. Let's fix this. I
want my tick spacing to be in minutes. One minute is 1/60 hours, which
is 1/60/24 days, or 0.0006944 days. But it's a pain to compute and enter
these fractions, so I'll let you in on a little secret: Excel lets you
enter these in a time format. So I just entered 0:01 for one minute, and
0:08 for 8 minutes axis maximum. You can change the number format, too,
to M:SS to avoid the 0: in front of times less than an hour. If you
wanted to show just seconds, so one minute is 60, two is 120, enter a
custom number format of
.
2. To use just seconds, independent of their role as a unit of time,
convert the times you enter into seconds. If you entered the data as
hh:mm:ss, multiply the time by (24)*(60)*(60) = 86400, the number of
seconds in a day. If you entered the time as mm:ss and Excel thinks you
meant hh:mm, multiply by (24)*(60) or 1440. Then just make a chart, and
you don't need to worry about time units.
- Jon
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Jon Peltier, Microsoft Excel MVP
Peltier Technical Services
Tutorials and Custom Solutions
http://PeltierTech.com/
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