Missing lines on line chart but legend shows all.

[poetstorm]

Hi there, I've been battling this one for over a week and am about to lose my mind. Charts are my one major excel kryptonite. They rarely do what I want and I don't understand why. I've even taken a class on it but when I get to real world data it still often goes sideways.

I wanted to create a chart to show total $ of adjustments by category (reason for adjustment) with months as the X axis. I created a line chart and I can see all three of my categories in the legend, but only one of the lines shows up on the chart itself.

I've been playing around in chart settings but have had no luck. Can anyone see where exactly I've gone wrong? This particular problem happens to me often. Would love to learn. Thanks so much!

Hoping my attachment comes through on this post.

[Pepe Le Mokko]

Are you still using XL2007?

[MrShorty]

There are only two months in the table/chart, so there are only two data points for each data series. In two of the data series, data is missing for one of the months. With only one real data point for each of those series, Excel cannot draw a line between the existing point and the missing point.

If you change the chart sub-type to "markers and lines," Excel will show markers, and you can see all three data series.

What do you want Excel to show when there is only one data point in a data series?

Edit to add: It appears that this is supposed to be a pivot table/pivot chart combination and not a regular chart. Since pivot charts have certain features and limitations different from regular charts, it might be helpful to include in your sample file some raw, dummy data so that potential solutions can be tested on the resulting pivot table/chart.

[poetstorm]

Are you still using XL2007?

No I'm using 2019. Still old, I know. But it's what we have.

[poetstorm]

There are only two months in the table/chart, so there are only two data points for each data series. In two of the data series, data is missing for one of the months. With only one real data point for each of those series, Excel cannot draw a line between the existing point and the missing point.

If you change the chart sub-type to "markers and lines," Excel will show markers, and you can see all three data series.

What do you want Excel to show when there is only one data point in a data series?

Edit to add: It appears that this is supposed to be a pivot table/pivot chart combination and not a regular chart. Since pivot charts have certain features and limitations different from regular charts, it might be helpful to include in your sample file some raw, dummy data so that potential solutions can be tested on the resulting pivot table/chart.

This was my solution. Could not see the forest through the trees until I turned on lines with markers. Then it becomes very apparent the issue is with my test data, not the chart. Thank you!

You are right, this was originally a pivot chart, but someone told me I should not use pivots for charts, so I tried stripping it all down to hard values to see if it would fix the issue. I've got it working again with the pivot. Just needed to flesh out the test data a bit more and it looks beautiful.

Thanks again!

[AliGW]

Please update your forum profile, which still says 2007.