# Excel Chart Help: Connecting two data series

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/excel-chart-help-connecting-two-data-series/567823>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [January 16, 2011, 3:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/excel-chart-help-connecting-two-data-series/567823 "2011-01-16T15:24:55Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Zakalwe](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zakalwe/32/270_2.png) [@Zakalwe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zakalwe)\
**Post date:** [January 16, 2011, 3:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/excel-chart-help-connecting-two-data-series/567823/1 "2011-01-16T15:24:55Z")

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Okay, so I have a scattergram (X,Y plot).

What I want to do is have two series (which I have):

X,Y point for 2009 data  
X,Y point for 2010 data

I can do all of that fine. Now I want it to put a line between the 2009 point and 2010 point based on the fact that they have a shared row. So assuming I have 15 rows of data with two points on each row, I want 30 points on the graph with each “pair” connected by a short line. Is this doable?

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Zakalwe](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zakalwe/32/270_2.png) [@Zakalwe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zakalwe)\
**Post date:** [January 16, 2011, 4:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/excel-chart-help-connecting-two-data-series/567823/2 "2011-01-16T16:33:00Z")

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To expand, imagine:

```auto

Person 1 2009$ 2009# 2010$ 2010#
Person 2 2009$ 2009# 2010$ 2010#

```

If $s are the Y-axis and #s the X-axis, I want four points, connected by two lines:

Person 1’s 2009$,2009# = Point 1  
Person 1’s 2010$,2010# = Point 2

Person 2’s 2009$,2009# = Point 3  
Person 3’s 2010$,2010# = Point 4

Points 1 and 2 should be connected.  
Points 3 and 4 should be connected.

The problem I’m running into is that when the 2009 information is in one series and the 2010 in another, Excel connects Point 1 and 3, and Points 2 and 4.

Now, I know I can do this by creating Points 1 and 2 as one data series. Points 3 and 4 become another data series.

The difficulty lies in the fact that I have Persons 1-284 to deal with! Frankly, I’ll go slightly (more) insane if I have to create and manually format 284 series.

Help!