

On the other hand, if you enter the labels as text (as was done when creating the bottom chart), you'll see an incorrect result: The data from August 2007 and June 2008 are placed close togethereven though they record months that are almost a year apart. (As you can see by looking at the data points, no values fall in the middle of the series.) If you take that step, the chart Excel creates automatically uses a continuous timescale, as shown in the top chart.

To make sure Excel handles this omission correctly, you must enter real date values (rather than text labels) for the category axis. The twist is that a big chunk of data (the months between August 2007 and June 2008) is missing. The diamonds and triangles on the line charts indicate the data points for which sales data is available.
#Month in axis scatter chart excel 2016 series
The pictured worksheet shows two charts that illustrate the exact same data: a series of monthly sales figures from two regions (covering the time period between January 2007 and December 2008). What's happening in fFigure above is worth examining in a bit of detail. The top chart uses category axis scaling to properly space out dates, even when there are missing values. Best of all, Excel automatically notices when you're using real dates, and kicks into action, making the appropriate adjustments, as shown in figure below. Because Excel stores dates and times as numbers, it can scale the chart accordingly (this process is sometimes called category axis scaling). Instead of entering text labels, you can enter actual dates or times. Fortunately, Excel offers an easy solution. This snafu doesn't present a problem in the previous example, but it's an issue if you need to chart years that aren't spread out evenly.
