Unwanted Weekend Dates in Chart

Scott has a set of data by date that is used for a graph. The data is entered by date which only reflects weekdays. (The data contains no entries for weekends.) When Scott graphs the data using the dates as the horizontal axis, Excel inserts the weekend dates with no data points. These dates are not in the original data and he cannot seem to get rid of them so that only the data in the table is shown in the chart.

Believe it or not, this behavior is by design. When you convert your data into a chart, Excel tries to make sense of the data it is charting. If it determines that the data in a particular column or row represents dates, it looks at the earliest date in the range and the latest date in the range and then uses that as the range for the axis. That means that it includes data points in the range that may not really exist in the original data—such as the weekends that Scott mentions.

The solution to this is to overcome the automatic parsing done by Excel as it converts the data in your worksheet into a chart. There are a few ways you can do this. First of all, you can convert your original dates into text values. (Excel doesn't recognize text values as dates, and therefore doesn't do the whole earliest-to-latest range thing.) You could do this by actually converting the date column or row into text or by adding a helper column or row that contains the dates as text representations. If you decide to go the helper route, you could use a formula such as the following:

=TEXT(A1,"m/d/yy")

You could, of course, change the formatting pattern for the date to anything you want, as described in other ExcelTips. You would then use the helper column or row as your axis data in the chart. Excel recognizes it as text and includes only the datapoints in the worksheet—no more phantom weekends!

Interestingly enough, you can also fool Excel in its parsing by simply converting a single cell in the date column into a text value. It appears that if the entire row or column doesn't contain dates, Excel no longer applies the date-range parsing when putting together the chart.

If you don't want to modify your original data, you can simply tell Excel to ignore the date parsing. Follow these steps if you are using Excel 2007 or Excel 2010:

1. Create your chart as you normally would. You should note that the chart includes the undesired phantom dates (weekends).
2. Right-click the axis that contains the dates. Excel displays a Context menu.
3. Choose Format Axis from the Context menu. Excel displays the Format Axis dialog box.
4. At the left side of the dialog box, choose Axis Options. (See Figure 1.)



Figure 1. The Axis Options of the Format Axis dialog box.

5. In the Axis Type section of the options, choose Text Axis.
6. Click OK to close the dialog box.

If you are using Excel 2013 then the steps are a bit different:

1. Create your chart as you normally would. You should note that the chart includes the undesired phantom dates (weekends).
2. Right-click the axis that contains the dates. Excel displays a Context menu.
3. Choose Format Axis from the Context menu. Excel displays the Format Axis task pane at the right of your work area.
4. The Axis Options settings should automatically be displayed, but if not click Axis Options and then the Axis Options icon. (See Figure 2.)



Figure 2. The Axis Options on the Format Axis task pane.

5. In the Axis Type section of the options, choose Text Axis.
6. Close the task pane, as desired.

At this point, Excel should redraw your chart and treat your dates as text values, even though they really are dates. This means that you won't get any phantom dates in the date range displayed in the chart. In addition, the dates on the axis should be displayed exactly as they appear in the worksheet data. Thus, if you want to change the way the dates are displayed in the chart, you'll need to reformat your source data for the desired appearance.

You should note that your ability to modify the Axis Type setting depends on the type of chart you are creating. If the chart doesn't have an axis (such as a pie chart) or the chart is primarily for plotting numbers (such as with an XY chart), then you may not be able to tell Excel to treat the axis as text. Why? Because doing so makes no sense in the case of those types of charts.

ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (13271) applies to Microsoft Excel 2007, 2010, and 2013.