Excel Help Page Doesn't Match Excel (Date Category Axis Base Unit)

I'm trying to make my Date Category Axis be linear/regular with respect to time.

(If someone can tell me how to do this, I don't care about the rest.)

I found a place in Excel Help that addresses this ("Change the base unit that is displayed on a date axis"), but it doesn't match what I see in my Excel application.

In particular, I don't have a "Base Unit" under Axis Options.
(for which I could click Fixed)

(My Excel app. says it's 2007, as does my Excel Help.)

(Vista 64-bit Home Premium)

Thank you for your reply.

I'm not sure what I said that made you think that I don't want a Date axis, since my question was (meant to be) how to make it (a Date axis) (that is) uniform in time (hard to articulate clearly) rather than one tick per row of the XL table.

Before posting my question originally, I double-checked that the axis was a Date axis, & that's why I was surprised to not see the section for the Base Unit.
(even had it not been a Date axis, I would've thought that when I clicked the radio bytton to assert that it is to be a Date axis, it would've accepted that, and so shown the Base Unit stuff.


After posting it, I went back to wrestle with it some more.

I discovered that my (table) column that I had originaly set to be of type Date was now of type ... er, I forget, but something else. I may have set it to that as part of my "wrestling" earlier, I don't know.

Anyway, I set it (back) to Date, & made another Line Chart..

..just like the last one.
(except that I had to make this one manually)

It behaved exactly the same.

Although I had gotten quite good with the earlier implementation of Excel Charts, I don't have very much experience with this one.
(nor, to be fully divulging, with XL in general, recently)

...so I'm out of ideas.
(but will probably continue wrestling with it)


Thanks again,
(& would appreciate any further ideas)


-- M.

Thanks again!

Attached is the XL file.

The following is probably not strictly required for getting your help on my precise problem, but I think it might be important for determining whether/not my overall goal is attainable.

Re what I want exactly: Your "missed dates" left me thinking that you are thinking of my data as quantized (into "dates"), whereas I see it as <continuous, but with data for only some points on that real-number line> -- so let me try to address that directly:

What I had in mind originally was that my Date Axis would be a continuous "time line", relative to which my data points would be located - and, optimally, the particular dates in my table would be noted (somehow(*)).

(*: Thinking about this more, I realized that ... well, something like: the latter would be different from just labeling existing tick marks: either there wouldn't be any tick marks other than of my rows, or there would have to be the normal regularly-spaced tick marks in addition to those)

Thank you!

(BTW, it might be helpful to change the title of this thread, to help searchers.)

I haven't gone through everything that your last implies, but it sounds (&looks) good.


..leaves me wondering whether/not I (one) should have been able to find this information in XL Help, or otherwhere.

any thoughts on that?


(I haven't yet figured out how to mark this issue as resolved.)


Thanks again,

-- M.