Month units on Y axis of stacked bar chart

[Mr_Mayhem]

Hi all,

I'm trying to generate a horizontal stacked Bar graph where the
horizontal (Y) axis uses units of months and years. It seems that no
matter what I do I can't move away from having days as the unit.
Although I can format the axis values to only show MM., the underlying
data is still days so when I change the Major Unit to 30 - I end up
having some miss aligned data because there's some months with 31 days
in them!

Any ideas on how I can tell Excel to use MONTHS as the base unit and not
DAYS???

Thanks for your help.

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[EarlK]

Mayhem;

I think the problem is that the horizontal axis in a bar (horizontal) chart
is a "value" axis, not a "category" axis, such as the vertical axis. This
distinction is important in understanding how charts work in Excel. Thus,
Excel puts labels every so many units (days, but not months) on this axis.
The only place I can think of where months can be the major unit is the
"time-scale" type of axis. This is really a category axis where Excel puts
in a category for each day, month, or year (you choose). But this axis
replaces the category axis in a chart, leaving the other axis a value axis.
But since you're creating a stacked bar chart, you need a category axis for
the vertical. What to do.

One possible solution is to create an additional data point, one in each
series with 31,28,31,30, etc. Then let these stack as do your real data
points. They'll mark off the months, though you'll have to label them. This
mandates a relationship between your data values and months, which seems
inherent in this case. I've included an example chart where the values being
charted are days (as dates are represented in Excel anyway). I used Rob
Boveys XY chart labeler to label the month points, each by hand. . This is
not a great solution, but it's the only thing I can think of.

I've posted a follow-up with the file attached, for anyone who's interested.

Regards from Virginia Beach,

Earl

ea...@livenet.net

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[Mr_Mayhem]

Earl,

Thanks for you efforts... unfortunatly it doesn't really fix my problem at hand
- so I guess what I'm trying to do is not possible with Excel (Maybe now that
Bill's going back to programming he'll fix some problems ??? :-) )
For my chart (horizontal axis = time, vertical axis = project name, stacked
horizontal bars show differrent stages of each project) I need calender months
on the axis, with the bars stopping right on the mark.

Oh well - but thanks again.

Mr-Mayhem