Excluding weekend dates from charts
Sometimes, Excel becomes overly helpful, leaving us having to figure out how to undo the unwanted help. For instance, as shown in Figure 9.11, the Excluding Chart Weekend Dates worksheet in the example workbook includes data for two Monday to Friday periods, and yet Excel insists on creating a gap for the weekend:
Figure 9.11 – Phantom dates inserted into a chart
Fortunately, there’s an easy fix, although many of us would be hard-pressed to figure it out on our own. Check this out:
- Right-click on the Horizontal (Category) axis and then choose Format Axis.
- Choose Axis Options | Axis Type | Text axis to close the gap. The settings are illustrated in Figure 9.12:
Figure 9.12 – Choosing Text axis to remove phantom dates from charts
As you can see, when the Chart Axis options are set to Automatically select based on data or Date axis, Excel interpolates any missing...
