Why does my chart look weird if I use dates as the 'x' axis values?

[htroberts]

I have hourly values that I'd like to put into chart form (specifically, into a stacked area chart).

The top chart in the attached spreadsheet uses the simple numerical series values in column A for the X axis, and the bottom chart uses the date/time values in column B.

For the chart with the date series, Excel seems to want to clump all values from 10/21 into one column, and all values from 10/22 into another...

How can I get the smooth curve with the dates in the X axis? Even better, can I get X axis labels that show only the dates (ex "Oct 21"), with sub-tick marks for the in-between values?

[mrice]

Your data range needs to be ='Sheet1'!$C$2:$F$31 and not ='Sheet1'!$B$1:$F$31

[htroberts]

Your data range needs to be ='Sheet1'!$C$2:$F$31 and not ='Sheet1'!$B$1:$F$31

Thanks, tried it, that doesn't actually help (well, it does fix the curve smoothing, but it also drops the dates from the axis labels--same effect as the first chart in the example). Excel seems to include the horizontal axis labels in what it calls the data range.

[Andy Pope]

Date axis only go as fine as Days, not hours.

If you correct date/time entry in cell B5 then you have equally spaced entries which means you can revert to Text axis.
You can even use multi level category labels to get date and time

[htroberts]

Date axis only go as fine as Days, not hours.

If you correct date/time entry in cell B5 then you have equally spaced entries which means you can revert to Text axis.
You can even use multi level category labels to get date and time

Thanks. Not sure how I missed that, but even without the mistake, the test axis is something new for me, so learning about it is very helpful.