4 value bubble chart - possible?

[tim.solomonson]

I have a dataset with 4 colums i'd like to depict in a chart (bubble style ideally) as follows:

1. y axis - project scale
2. x axis - project client
3. bubble size - project cost
4. bubble color - project type

I can't write code so I'm hoping this is something I can do with the built-in functionality of excel. i'd say I'm an advanced beginner to low level intermediate in terms of excel skills...but I'm utterly useless with charts.

Any help is appreciated greatly!

[MrShorty]

Short but useless answer -- Yes, this is possible.

1) You say that your x axis values will be "project client" which sound more like a text category than a number. A bubble chart, like an XY scatter chart, uses a numeric x axis, not a category x axis. You can try creating the bubble chart and see what Excel defaults to when it converts text to number along the x axis, but I don't usually like to trust to the whims of Excel, so I would probably set up something (a lookup table and lookup function maybe) that will assign a number of my choosing to each client so that I can control the position along the x axis for each client.
2) It seems that a lot of charting questions include a preferred way to arrange the data. In this case, a lot depends on whether each "project type" shares the exact same list of "project clients".
2a) If each "project type" (data series) has a unique "project client number" (x values) list, then you will want to arrange the data in sets of three columns where the left column is the project client number, the middle column is the project scale (y values), and the right column is the project cost (size values).
2b) If each project type shares the exact same list of project client numbers, then put the project client number (x values) in the leftmost column of your chart data range, with alternating project scale (y values) and project cost (size values) columns to the right.
3) Now create the bubble chart.
3a) If each data series has its own set of x values, select the first block of 3 columns and insert the scatter chart. Then bring up the select data dialog and add each subsequent data series, filling in the appropriate x, y, and size fields.
3b) If each data series shares a common set of x values, then you can select the entire block of cells and insert the bubble chart.
4) If you want to put the client names/text along the horizontal axis, you can use a technique similar to this (https://peltiertech.com/reciprocal-chart-axis-scale/ ) that uses a dummy labels with data labels to show each client's name/text.

What steps do you need help with?