Re-arrange Axis of MS Excel 2016 Scatterplot

Software: MS Excel 2016

Files: GitHub Repository

Referring Question: MS Excel Scatterplot converts Months to Numbers

I created scatterplot in month_unordered_axis.xlsx from following data

Then I customized X-axis so it displays only month

Unfortunately the scatterplot (in Chart1 of month_unordered_axis.xlsx) starts with October rather than January.

How to order the X-axis so it displays from January to December?

Your graph is displaying October as the minimum value from its automatic formatting of max/min values. i believe if you scroll up in that formatting window on the right while you have the X-axis selected you will see an option for min and max value. You could set this for the minimum value you in your graph to 36892. This corresponds to the integer value for you lowest date in your series. The unfortunate side effect is that half your circle will be cut off as it extends into the range that is less than your minimum value. You can also set your maximum date to 37256. There are a few other end numbers you can use to give the same results but its essentially the end of December start of January the following year that allow December to be displayed.

Now if you want every month to be displayed (which is independent of placing max min values on your graph), look for the UNITS and Major box. Since you will want ever major line displayed with the name of a month, you will need to make sure the next grid line is a month away. Since not all month are not equal in length you need to play with this number a bit to suit your needs. I started with 30 and wound up with 2 Januaries back to back. However bump it up to 31 and then it tips over into the next month.

The important thing to note here is that you are not actually graphing by months along the X-axis. You are actually plotting by the number of days since January 1st 1900. so January 1st 2001 is 36892 days since January 1st 1900. What excel is doing is counting those days, determine what the date is in a way we like to read it and displaying only the portion we want it to. So for mmmm it the full spelling of the month. And you can see why each grid line being 31 days away is needed to jump into the next month. The kicker is, the grid line is not necessarily the 1st of each month due to the over stepping that is done when you advance 31 days in a month that has 28, 29, or 30 days. and that error gets compounded through the year.

Try using 32 as theMajor Unit step first before putting min and max caps on. (31 resulted in Feb being skipped on my screen). You should still see your axis start before Jan, but your months should all be in order, all displayed and no circles being cut off. Adding the max and min to the axis will cut off your circles but limit the axis to only displaying 12 months.