Excel does not recognize date format on x-axis?

Question

Hi,

I was trying to use Excel to draw some XY Scatter charts using a table of data. However, the x-axis does not seem to recognize my data in 2006/09/22 format (I was unable to change it to other date format) and show funny dates (or even numbers!) on the x-axis.

Does anyone know of any possible solution to this? Appreciate your help!!

Answer 1

When I enter dates on my version in the order YYYY/MM/DD, it changes it to MM/DD/YYYY. It may be the way I have my international settings set. If it converts the date to the number 38982, that is the decimal representation of the date. It happens to be the days since 1/00/19000, (the beginning of Excel time.) Incidentally, if there were a decimal and numbers after the number, that is the time part.

If you are getting the numbers, you can reformat the axis to a date format and get the dates. Put your chart up and right click on the X axis. Click Format Axis, choose Date, then a format you like. If you don't like any of them and you want YYYY/MM/DD, the you may need to make a custom format. Click custom and in the type: field, put in YYYY/MM/DD, click ok and you should be good to go.

Answer 2

If you create the chart using wizard,
1st step is to pick the type of the chart (xy scatter), after you click next, you have to fill data in data range, but if you click on "series" tab, the value of x axis had been change by windows, you have to replace (click the x values button -- highlight the range) the x values there