Creating a chart showing started and finished, per date?

[jaqob]

Hi,

I have been using Excel quite a bit, but now I have a seemingly simple problem I can't figure out.
I have data in this format:

Name Start Finish
Item 1 2016-01-20 2016-01-21
Item 2 2016-01-20 2016-01-22
Item 3 2016-01-22 2016-01-22
Item 4 2016-01-23

Or if the formatting is off, like this:
table.JPG

Now, I would like to have a graph that in some way show inflow and out flow per day. I.e. how many are started and finished each day.
My first idea was to use a pivot chart, but I just can't get the result I want.
chart.JPG

This is the same data as below, but it is just not correct. E.g. There are two finished on the 2016-01-22, but the graph only shows one. And I can't really figure out why. I realise that it is related to using start in the axis field, but I don't realise how I should solve it.

Could someone please point me in the right direction?

[Kaper]

It is probably not that easy to do it with pivot (would be easy if data layout woud be:

date | started item | finished item
date* | starteditem | finished item

* next date or the same if more items started or finished the same day

Of course you could prepare a list of dates and use simple COUNTIF function - see screenshot

[jaqob]

Thanks, not as easy as I hoped for, but it definitely works!

[Kaper]

Glad to hear it works.
And thanks for reputation point.
If that takes care of your original question, please select Thread Tools from the menu link above and mark this thread as SOLVED.
Thanks.