Excel (2007) won't do a particular X-Y (Point) graph for me..

  • Thread starter Thread starter Ake
  • Start date Start date
A

Ake

Hi,

Well, Excel _does_ X-Y graphs, but not this one.
I have, in the columns A, B, G, and E from row 7 to 5175, sequential time,
data, and data (and dummy data) , respectively.
When I make an X-Y plot using the time column for the X-axis, it plots as
expected.
But when I plot column B versus column D, I get column B on the Y-axis, and
the (relative?) row number on the X-axis. (There are gaps in the data, but
any gaps plot alright in a smaller data sub set, even if they are not
matched).
My workaround consists of plotting B versus D and E, and then remove E ;-)
Somehow it seems Excel won't make a proper X-Y plot properly if just two
columns are given. (because of the large number of rows? and/or the gaps,
and/or because the E column had no gaps)

Can anybody explain?

Best regards / Ake
 
Sorry, my "workaround" was a red herring. The problem remains... some data
sets still won't plot as X-Y/ Ake
 
If the data in the X range are not numeric (even if only one is not
numeric), then Excel will treat the values as labels, and use the counting
numbers 1, 2, 3, etc. as X values. If your blanks are "" returned by a
formula, you should know that "" is a piece of text, not a blank, and is
either treated as a zero or treated as a non-numeric X value.

- Jon
 
Thanks a lot Jon,

That's it. I did not realize that "" is in fact a string. And I did my small
data set testing using "no data" instead of "" which I thought meant the same
thing. So I got confused by the results.

So, how should I actually do IF(Condition;Something;"") then?
The reason I use it is that it works well on the Y-data, and that the table
I plot from looks "as clean as it is" (I don't want to fill all empty cells
with "########").

Is there a workaround, or even some way to force the plot to "think right".

Thank's again for clearing this up / Ake
 
Yes, you are right. But that solves the plotting problem only- but it still
does show up as irritating (to me ;-) text in the table, rather than "empty
space". /Ake
 
You can deal with the "irritating ... text" in the table by conditional
formatting, colouring the font white (or your cell's background colour) if
the cell satisfies the CF condition/ Formula is/ =ISNA(A1)
 
Yes thank you, that does the job. I still think that MS should consider a way
to imprint "Empty" in a cell from a formula, now that "" does not do that. /
Ake
 
"" has never done that. We have asked for such a BLANK() or NULL() function,
but have never seen such.

- Jon
 
Would it really upset the VB syntax that much if "" was considered as empty
as if no characters at all had been entered?

/ Ã…ke
 
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