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Creating a Scatter or Line Graph Using a Wide Range of Dates

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    Creating a Scatter or Line Graph Using a Wide Range of Dates

    Hello,

    So I have two sets of data. The first are hire dates and the other is separation dates. These obviously span of a significant period of time. I would like to create either a scatter or line graph in the hope of viewing trends. I would like to create a couple different graphs so I'd like to be able to chose what the graph displays at will. For example, I might want to see trends year to year, however at other times I might want to see trends month to month covering a single year. Does any one know how to do this? I won't ever need it down to the day, just by month and/or year. I have attached the spreadsheet I am using. There are four columns with information in them but I'm looking to graph the last two. Thanks in advance for any help!
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    Re: Creating a Scatter or Line Graph Using a Wide Range of Dates

    Before you can generate the chart, you must first generate the numbers you want in the chart. A pivot table or several COUNTIFS() or a FREQUENCY() function are probably good candidates for this part of the operation. I would expect you to end up with a table like
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    With a table like that, it should be as easy as adding a line chart (or scatter chart if desired) based on that table. A line chart will be able to use a nice date axis, which will probably look nicer for calendar dates, than the strict value axis that is available to a scatter chart.

    Generating the table is probably the hardest part. Are you familiar with pivot tables? Are you familiar with the COUNTIFS() function?
    Quote Originally Posted by shg
    Mathematics is the native language of the natural world. Just trying to become literate.

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    Re: Creating a Scatter or Line Graph Using a Wide Range of Dates

    First thank you so much for your quick reply! I've used pivot tables a little bit but no experience with the COUTIFS() function. I did try to create a pivot table first hoping I could then use a PivotChart but it didn't work as planned. I don't think I know enough to create a working table.

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    Re: Creating a Scatter or Line Graph Using a Wide Range of Dates

    I have very little experience with pivot tables, too. On the few occasions when I have used a pivot table for something like this, I ended up adding helper columns to the raw data table that would extract month, day, and year information from the date columns
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    With these helper columns added, it should be fairly easy to use a pivot table to count month, year, or month/year hires and separations.

    For help on the various date functions used, or to explore using the COUNTIFS() function, this page links to help files for all of Excel's built in functions (COUNTIFS() is under statistical functions). https://support.office.com/en-us/art...rs=en-US&ad=US

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