Excel Filter: How to make these bars wider?

November 6, 2008 6:00 AM

How can I make the X units of an excel chart weeks instead of days?

I've got some data that is tabulated weekly and then put on a chart for higher-up consumption. The data is in the form of flight hours per week, with week as the X axis and flight hours on the Y. The difficulty arises when Excel plots the data with "days" as the units. Selectable options are days, months and years for the X-axis units. Is there a way that I can trick Excel into plotting the data with weeks as the X-axis? My boss's boss really wants the graph to not have such skinny bars.

posted by squorch to computers & internet (4 comments total)

Make new X-axis data using WEEKNUM()?
posted by scruss at 6:13 AM on November 6, 2008 [1 favorite]

Why couldn't you just convert the dates to text? There's no particular reason the chart needs to know that 11/3/2008 represents a day or a week beginning that day, it's just a label.
posted by jedicus at 7:18 AM on November 6, 2008

For a line or bar chart, the following should work.

1. Double click on the X-axis.
2. Select the "Scale" tab.
3. Change "Base unit" to Days.
4. Change "Major unit" to 7 Days.

Note: For a scatter chart, Excel cannot figure out how to handle dates on the X-axis.
posted by GarageWine at 10:48 AM on November 6, 2008

Great call on converting the values to text. Since my boss is already doing the hard work in pulling the numbers out week by week, there's no need for Excel to know that those labels are actually dates.
posted by squorch at 12:53 PM on November 6, 2008