Excel Column Chart Bar Width

[sz3gfj]

I'm going nuts on this and need some expert help.

Excel 2010. Trying to do a column chart with 5 data series and about 20 points per series.

When I build the chart and input the data range, the chart appears with reasonable width bars. But when I add the horizontal axis labels, the bars narrow to line width, and you cannot tell the series apart. Horizontal labels are dates, displayed vertically.

So why, all of a sudden, do the bar widths change... and what can I do about it??

Thanks in advance for your help.

[Andy Pope]

Assuming you category labels are dates you need to format the Axis as Text rather than Dates.

[sz3gfj]

Thanks, Andy. I ended up creating a new row with text equivalents of the dates and it works fine.

But it does beg the question... dates used to work in Excel 2003. So what changed in the evolution to Excel 2010? And is someone at Microsoft fixing this issue?

Thanks - Rocki

[Andy Pope]

Dates still work, which is actually what your problem was.

xl2003 used to have on the options dialog, Automatic / Catgeory / Time series axes options.
in xl2007 and later the axes options are automatic / Text / Dates.