How do I make a cost vs. date chart in Excel?

Factual Questions
1

I’m running Excel for Mac 2011. I have the following data:


1956	$8,995.00
1960	$9,450.00
1963	$11,590.00
1964	$11,995.00
1967	$13,300.00
1968	$12,750.00
1970	$13,995.00
1972	$14,995.00
1976	$17,890.00
1978	$29,950.00
1982	$33,950.00
1985	$44,000.00
1987	$49,600.00
1998	$124,500.00
2005	$229,750.00
2008	$297,000.00
2009	$297,000.00
2010	$297,000.00
2011	$307,500.00

I want to make a chart with the year as the X-axis, and the dollar amounts as the Y-axis. This is what I’ve done: I put the dates in column A and the dollar amounts in column B, as shown. I clicked on Charts, and chose Line graph. This gave me a chart that had 0 at the origin, 1 as the maximum value of the Y-axis, tick marks on the Y-axis increasing by 0.1, $8,995.00 as the only value on the X-axis (no tick marks), 2011 as the title, and a blue line followed by 2011 as the legend. No graph line is on the chart.

I’d expect inserting a chart to be easier. I’d expect that one would merely choose the range, and Excel would know that the first column is the X-axis and the second column is the Y-axis, and just draw the line. It seems my expectations were too lofty.

How do I make my chart?

2

I logged onto the PC at the office, and I was able to get a line graph by doing what I described. Only it doesn’t give me dates on the X-axis, and there is a ‘series’ on the X-axis with a value of zero. Don’t know what that is.

Anyway, I need to know how to do this on a Mac.

3

What you’re looking for is a Scatter graph, not a line graph.

Assuming your data has dates in column A and values in column B, simply highlight all the data, go to the “Insert” tab (I assume Excel for Mac looks like Excel for Windows, with the Ribbon?)

Click on the “Scatter” button in the Charts section of the Ribbon, and choose the type of scatter plot you want (markers only, with straight lines, with smooth lines, etc). The graph will appear on your page already done with dates as the X axis and values as the Y axis. Then you can modify the legends, axes, etc as you wish to customize the appearance.

4

It looks different in Excel for Macs 2011. There is a tab for Charts. I copied the data onto a new spreadsheet, clicked the Charts tab, and chose Straight marked scatter.

The Y-axis goes from 0 to 1 by 0.1, and the X-axis goes from 0 to 1.2 by 0.2. I reformatted the X-axis to 1956-2020, and the Y-axis to 8000-330000. The X-axis now goes from 1956 to 216 and a bit, and the Y-axis goes from 8000 to 308,000. There are no vertical grid lines, and no data on the chart.

ETA: The 2010 version on my Seattle computer gives the correct result when I use your advice.

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