Series of two non-adjacent cells?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Mike Hartsough
  • Start date Start date
M

Mike Hartsough

I have a list of daily values. I want to see the slope between two values
that are several months apart.

How do I define a series of just two cells (D224 and D266) that are
non-adjacent (non-sequential?)?

Thanks,
Mike

p.s. When I searched this group for "trendline", I got no hits. When I
searched for "trend", I got a lot of hits, including many hits containing the
word, "trendline". Isn't that odd?
 
Do you want to calculate it or chart it? Presumably you have dates in
related cells (assuming column A).

Calculation is easy:

=(D266-D224)/(A266-A224)

Plotting:

Activate your chart. Go to Chart menu > Source Data > Series tab. Click add.
Click in the Y Values box, select D266, hold Ctrl and select D224. Click in
the X Values box, select A266, hold Ctrl and select A224. Press Enter.

This works for an XY chart. If you have a line chart and the scale is a date
axis scale, you will need to convert the added series from a line series to
and XY series: select the series, Chart menu > Chart Type, select something
in the XY family, with a line and probably markers.

- Jon
 
Thanks Jon.

Just want to plot.

I didn't mention that I already have two series in the chart. A "Planned"
series and an "Actual" series. My X axis is dates (Days) taken from column A.
The new series is to represent the slope that "Actual" needs to have in order
to join "Planned" by a specific date.

So when I create the new series, its points are displayed in the chart as
the first two days in the X axis (which isn't correct). If I specify new X
axis values that cause the new series to display correctly (A224,A266), it
messes up the display of my existing series.

Thanks again,
Mike
 
Mike -

You could put values in two more columns, with numerical values in (say)
E224 and E266 corresponding to the Y values you want plotted, and #N/A
elsewhere. Plot this column using the same X values. Excel will plot the two
points and connect a line where #N/A is present between plottable values.

- Jon
 
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