This is my sheet: The first column contains DATES with varying number of days between them. My next column contains ordinary VALUES. – What I would like to have is a chart – columns or lines – showing the values and distributed according to the number of days between them. So far, the only ‘method’ I have found is to fill in ALL dates, even those without values. This works in a way, but with values through a whole year (or several years), the sheet gets very big with a lot of blank lines without value.
I run Numbers 3.6.2 and OSX 10.11.5 on iMac late 2012.
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JAN E. WILLE
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How Do I Create a Chart In Numbers With Non-Consecutive Dates?
Comments: One Response to “How Do I Create a Chart In Numbers With Non-Consecutive Dates?”
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This is a difficult task. The easiest way to do it is to do what you suggest: create a long table with all of the dates. Then only populate the dates that you have data for. Then use the whole table to make a chart.
Whether 365 rows in a chart (or 730 or 1095) is "big" is relative. I would say that 10,000 rows is "big" -- it doesn't really matter as it is easy to create a chart with as many dates as you want. I usually would put something like 1/1/2013 in A2. Then a formula for =A2+1 into A3. Then I would copy A3 and paste it into A4 to A1096 or whatever. Takes a few seconds.
If you are handy with functions, you can even do this using a second table, perhaps hidden on another sheet. Create the table with a ton of rows and dates on the left. Then use the function VLOOKUP to have the second column look for that date in the table on your table on the main sheet and populate it with either a number or an error depending on whether the date is represented in your table. Then create the chart based on that new hidden table. I just tried it and it works. May do a video on that soon.
Another option is to use another app. Google Docs actually handles this situation well, creating the chart with the values spaced appropriately by date.