Comments on: Line Chart vs. Step Chart

By: Jon Peltier

Jon Peltier — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 18:03:05 +0000

Hi Bessie - What kind of numbers do you need along the X axis? If it's just integer values, you can use these in place of the dates, then tell Excel to use a date scale instead of a category scale. Dates are whole numbers, after all. Then you'll have to apply a different number format, probably General, since Excel will format your whole numbers as dates. If you need real numbers which may include fractions, you can use the XY chart with error bars, as described in Step Charts in Microsoft Excel.

By: Beesie

Beesie — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 13:28:49 +0000

Jon, the instructions were very useful and I obtained a beautiful line graph. Thank you!
However, I’d rather have a numbers on the x-axis and I don’t get that solved. For me, it is important at which day since the start of an experiment an event occurs, not the exact date. Does anyone have advice on how to do that? I know it is possible to do it with the error bars or just by copying data, but those are just not that elegant and involve producing a lot more data.
Thank you in advance!

By: Irregular Time Series? No. Oversampling. | Jorge Camoes' Charts

Irregular Time Series? No. Oversampling. | Jorge Camoes' Charts — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 23:52:42 +0000

[...] me give you an example. A while back, Jon Peltier wrote in his blog: I don’t understand the obsession with an equal date interval. A line chart need not [...]

By: Geert

Geert — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 15:02:24 +0000

Dear mr. Peltier,

Thank you the reply. I tried your solution and it works perfectly! Those 0.5% cases give me a lot of trouble… Well, thanks again for the quick and helpful response.

Best regards,
Geert.

By: Jon Peltier

Jon Peltier — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 19:24:02 +0000

2007 uses existing VBA code successfully 99.5% of the time. This is part of the other 0.5%. In Excel 2003, the error bar value for the unused error bar direction was optional. In 2007 it is supposedly optional, but you do have to explicitly enter a zero for the unused direction.

ActiveChart.SeriesCollection(1).ErrorBar Direction:=xlY, Include:=xlPlusValues, _
    Type:=xlCustom, Amount:="=Sheet1!y_error_1", MinusValues:="0" 

ActiveChart.SeriesCollection(1).ErrorBar Direction:=xlY, Include:=xlMinusValues, _
    Type:=xlCustom, Amount:="0", MinusValues:="=Sheet1!y_error_2"

By: Geert

Geert — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 12:57:22 +0000

Dear mr. Peltier,

thanks for explaning the step chart procedure. I incorporated it in a Excel2003 macro.

Right now, I’m in the process of converting that macro to Excel2007 and that causes some problems. I put a post about this on the mrexcel forum:

http://www.mrexcel.com/forum/showthread.php?p=1723162&posted=1#post1723162

Hope you can take a look there, sinceyou seem to be expert on this matter.

Thanks, best regards,
Geert.

By: Category Axis Tricks for Line and Area Charts - 2 » PTS Blog

Category Axis Tricks for Line and Area Charts - 2 » PTS Blog — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 18:06:22 +0000

[...] Line Chart vs. Step Chart, we saw that two points with the same category value are plotted on the same vertical line if the [...]

By: derek

derek — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 18:48:30 +0000

Berkeley economist Brad DeLong rightly praises the Wall Street Journal's step graph of Obama and Clinton's delegate and superdelegate pledges over the course of the 2008 Democratic primary campaign. (and wrongly saves the original GIF as a JPG)

By: Jon Peltier

Jon Peltier — Sat, 24 May 2008 14:01:20 +0000

Michel – Good idea. I’ve done that, and entered links to the related blog posts to the web page.

By: Michel

Michel — Sat, 24 May 2008 13:52:21 +0000

Why not post-editing your post and add a link to
http://peltiertech.com/Excel/ChartsHowTo/StepChart.html ?

Regards,
Michel