I am not too hot with Excel- basics and some advance functions, but dont use graphing a lot so am getting stuck here.



my data set consists of date (over about a 4 week period), target work (the amount of work that needs to be done), and actual work (the amount of work that was done). I have created a bar graph to to show target/actual progress against time, relatively simple, but I also need to show a difference graph and no idea where to go.

I want time as the x axis, with the difference between target and actual work on the Y. So if we needed to achieve 30 work units and achieved 25, the plot would be -5 against date. I have the column for difference in work, so its just a 2 column graph, but I can tfigure out how to make it.

I have attached a sample sheet to give an idea of the type of graph and data, any help would be most useful.

Attached Files

Sample.xlsx (10.0 KB, 8 views)

I've attached a few examples. I'm not sure why you had difficulty doing this if you were able to graph Target vs. Time.

In the first, the difference (Target - Actual) is displayed as a bar graph. However, since there are negative values, they overlay the horizontal axis and its labels.

In the second, this is helped somewhat by moving where horizontal axis crosses the vertical axis to -4. While the labels are no longer obscured by the bars, it is now a bit counterintuitive with "positive" bars representing some negative data.

Lastly, I changed the above to a line graph. Again, the labels are not obscured but in this the representation of negative data is less counterintuitive.

If you want to put them all on the same chart, it can be done by using a secondary axis.

Attached Files

Sample.xlsx (16.5 KB, 9 views)

Cheers Gebobs- exactly what I needed. I think I got stuck on the axis, mine were coming out the other way round (graph was vertical not horizontal) and it didnt even occur to me that I could change it. I dont use graphs too often, and this is only a client request to track daily outputs to prove we can achieve a completion date. Saved my bacon, thanks

Mmmmm...bacon