How to create a bar chart Y axis continuous? instead of discrete.

[ubludkisranye]

In the attached picture, I've created a bar chart (Rpm on Y axis) and Tank size on X-axis. Is there any way I can make the Y-axis continuous instead of discrete?

In the graph, I am just showing the delta between high tank volume and low tank volume. It's a stacked bar graph and I have hidden the low volume and high volume bars.

Your help is very much appreciated

[rorya]

You have duplicated values for some of the RPM numbers, so how would you expect them to plot on a continuous axis?

[ubludkisranye]

For example, I will change those duplicate values at 115 rpm, to 114 and 115.
I just want to know how to plot it on the continuous axis.

[MrShorty]

I think the closest, easiest approach is to format the vertical axis and force it to be a date axis. Bring up the format axis dialog and check the the "Date axis" button. If Excel chooses to apply a date number format to the axis, select the number format tab in the format axis dialog and use General or other integer format.

Your axis values are all integers, but they are formatted to show one decimal place, suggesting that they may not always be integers? One thing to know about a date axis is that it is not truly continuous. It is an integer only axis. You can scale the numbers, if needed. You may need to try a few different things to get the axis/chart to look the way you want.

[ubludkisranye]

Attachment 717020

I tried that but its not working out. The graph bars are not aligning on the primary axis.

[MrShorty]

Your attachment failed to attach. Be sure to follow the instructions in the yellow banner at the top of the page for attaching a copy of your file.

[ubludkisranye]

Copy of Copy of ATO B23 Mixing Parameters FINAL (044).xlsx

please see excel file

[MrShorty]

With three different charts and no explanation, I was a little uncertain what you are trying to do. I found the third chart towards the bottom that looks like the one in the OP and decided to work with that one (since that seemed simplest).

First, I selected the third chart, formatted the vertical axis, and checked the Date axis button. Nothing really changed, which was confusing. I went up to column J to investigate the data and discovered that J17 has a carriage return, which makes this one cell a text string rather than a number. Edit the cell to delete the carriage return (or re-enter the 100 as a real number), and then the third chart's date axis immediately shows the expected values (50 [19 Feb 1900] to 475 [19 Apr 1901] in 14 ("2 week") unit increments. Spot checking the chart against the data and everything looks correctly lined up. From there, I could change the major axis unit to 15 or 20 or something more reasonable and other formats and edits, if desired. Basically, with two edits, I think I fixed the third chart in the file.

Is that what you are looking for -- what the other charts were attempting to create?

[ubludkisranye]

Can you please attach the excel file where you fixed the graph?

[MrShorty]

It will be a while before I can. What difficulty are you having with those two edits?

[ubludkisranye]

Thank you. It works Is there a way I can make the bar lines thicker? The bar lines got very thin with the adjustment.

[ubludkisranye]

I tried to decrease Gap Width and increase series overlap but it doesn't work. Do you have any other ideas?

[MrShorty]

With a date axis, the bars will only be 1 unit/day thick. My first thought for making them wider is to make several copies of each record where the value in column J varies by one. So, using the last entry (row 17) where column J is now 100, make a total of 5 copies of that row, make the values in column J be 98, 99, 100, 101, 102. With the bars in the chart formatted to have no gap, these should blend together to look like a single bar that is 5 units thick (about 1% of the chart height). Decide how wide you want the bars and make that many copies of each data point.