So I made a graph in excell (highlighted a grid, added boarders, hand entred numbers up the y axis and across the x axis, printed it out, and I thought I was good to go. But now as I start to use it, I realize what I ACTUALLY neeed is for the numbers to corresponsd to lines and not spaces. So I’m wondering if there is a away to adjust one cell height to so that it will force everything above (or below) it to follow suit. That is, a way to click on a cell just below the numbers for the y axis, make it’s size 1.5 bigger then it is now and hopefully that will line up all the numbers with lines instead of space. But that doesn’t seem to work. The other way would be to find a way to do it with the boarders, but none of the borders in excel, go thorugh the cell (except diagoannly). I’m kinda wearing about using the chart wizard, since I don’t have any data to put into it. Anyone else got any ideas?
You could merge two cells (one on top of the other) on your Y-axis, put the number in there and then center it vertically. That seems like it would put the number next to a line.
You can still use the chart wizard even if you don’t have data to put into it yet. I assume you just want a blank you can print and then fill in your own information, yes? Just open a blank workbook and select a few cells across two rows. Click chart wizard, select the style of chart you want, use the default settings (click ‘next’ twice, then ‘finish’) and you’ll have a chart blank that you can easily adjust by right-clicking and selecting ‘chart options’. You can drag and resize, or go back and add labels, adjust the axes independently, etc. all very easily without having to go back and re-do each and every item on the chart.
Okay, the merging won’t work. I tried it quickly and it looked like it would only be able to line things up with every other line. The wizard I’ll have to play with a little more, cuz it wasn’t being very friendly.
What, specifically, are you trying to create? What kind of chart (bar, scatterplot, etc) and what will be measured along the X and Y axes? And when you say the chart wizard wasn’t being friendly, what specifically was/wasn’t it doing?
I just leased a car. It’s a 48 month lease with 15000 miles per year allowed.
Across the x axis I have the numbers 1-48 and across y is 0-60000 in increments of 1250. I then have a line going diagonally through the graph to show where I should be each month. I plan to use this so I can plot where my milage is each month and know right away if I have to back off on driving once in a while. I’d much rather realize early on that there’s a problem rather then find out at 40 months that I can only put on 3000 more miles without a penalty. I have one printed out already that I thought was going to work, but like I said before, I think I’d rather have the numbers align with lines rather then spaces. Does that make sense?
Of course I could always just do it by hand, but on the computer would be much nicer.
Could you perhaps draw a rough picture of what you mean in MS Paint or on paper and then scan it/take a picture of it?
A mileage chart should certainly be possible, either directly in Excel or with a little afterprocessing in another program, but I can’t visualize how you want it.
I’m not clear what you’re trying to do. If you’re actually using an Excel graph, with the desired values in columns, you get the vertical gridlines to align with the values at the bottom like this: left-click on the bottom axis, select “format axis”, select the “scale” tab, and un-check “Value (Y) axis crosses between categories”. The last word may be different from “categories”.
Ah, well that’s easy then, and you do have information to fill out in excel. Here’s what I’ve done:
Title Column A ‘Months’ and Column B ‘Mileage’
In the first cell in the months column (A2), put a 1. In the cell below that, =A2+1. Then select the remainder of the 48 cells below and fill the formula down (ctrl + d). That will number your cells 1-48.
In Column B, to fill in the mileage:
The mileage works out to 1250 per month, so in cell B2 put in 1250, then in the cell below type =B2+1250. Again, select the remainder of the cells and fill down the formula. That will fill in each cell with the anticipated mileage for that month. Then, you can select both columns and create a line chart with the information you are looking for.
I actually have this created and was going to upload to my FTP for you to download but my host is migrating servers at the moment and I can’t access it. If you’d like I can email it to you.
Okay, I used this method, and it’ll work. It’s not exactly what I’m looking for, but it’ll do just fine. Thanks.