Stacked Area Chart Taper on/off issue

I searched the forum and found this:
http://www.excelforum.com/excel-gene...g-to-zero.html

Which is about the same problem as i'm having, but my situation is a bit different...

Here is a sample of my data. As you can see, the graph tapers on and tapers off at the start and end of the data. I want it to go straight up and down. i've googled it and searched on forums, but can't find the solution without completely changing the structure of my data...

Originally Posted by Andy Pope

If you were actually using the dates in row 4 I would say you need to add extra data points to avoid the slopes. Thats is you need 2 data points for a single date, zero and actual data.

But you are not using dates and are just plotting equally space categories so you can swap to stacked column and set Gap width to zero

Thanks for the reply Andy!

I actually made this as a stacked column graph at first, but it was too hard to make anything of the chart since it was too hard to read for the users. I just want it to go straight down instead of taper off at the end and vise versa for the beginning

actually, no!
I had a little gap in between.
But this is cool!

Even that it a bit hard to read still. I'm assuming i can't have it both ways (taper in middle and no taper at ends)?
The taper is a kind of nice visual for the middle, but my users are most interested in the end start/end dates of each object.

Okay....now i face a problem with the columns.
Since my data is separated by weeks, the gaps won't go away it seems.

Okay....now i face a problem with the columns.
Since my data is separated by weeks, the gaps won't go away it seems.
Attachment 314882

oh!
3.PNG

I think it needs to be a stacked graph like this. The purpose of it is to see the weekly workload of selected engineers . And there are projects that each engineers is assigned to - each project has a required # of hours of work for completion. So the red lines are the requirement line. For us to be in "good shape" there should not be any white space under the red line curve. The reason its stacked is so that the users can select any combination of projects vs engineers and see what the workload is like and potentially add more hours to certain engineers based on whether the white space under the red curve is "filled" or not.

Here's what my sheet looks like:
snippp.PNG
sorry for the black. There's some sensitive information here

Not sure if the last links worked or not...something weird with quick reply + attaching?
3.PNG


snippp.PNG

Originally Posted by Andy Pope

Maybe show the #Engineers per time slot and the red line. Then in another chart/display allow for a more detail view of a time slot showing each engineer.

So for example:
graph one: shows one area graph + one line = showing total engineers + total required hours

graph two: shows the stacked area graph [for one time period] + one line for total requirements [for one time period]

Is this what you mean?

You know what, that just might work!
I think you're on to something!

It will be a bit of work, but probably less of a pain as adding data points (unless there's an easy way to add all the data points <.<)