Excel spreadsheet with login times and create graph from that data

[DrBeaker]

Hi All,

 

Ok this might seem a very dumb question to the Excel gurus out there (I don't count myself as one of them). This is what I'm trying to do...

 

I want to put some data into an Excel spreadsheet and then create a graph from that data. The information I want is the login times in minutes and seconds on our old computers. Then the login times in minutes and seconds on our new computers. To show that we've got a decrease in login times. I know the raw figures I have prove this, but I'm having a brain fart when it comes to this, putting it into a visual graph and I can't seem to figure this out.

 

Anybody have any ideas etc. or done similar?

 

Thanks

[hallb15]

What's wrong with selecting the data columns and pressing F11 to draw the chart?

That'll give you something like this

Edited July 10, 2019 by hallb15
Trigger happy :)

[DrBeaker]

What's wrong with selecting the data columns and pressing F11 to draw the chart?

That'll give you something like this

[ATTACH=CONFIG]54292[/ATTACH]

 

I didn't even know you could do that in Excel with F11!

 

I've tried that just using your example and it's getting there. Did you format those cells for the time data, or just enter the data directly without any cell formatting or formulas for time?

 

This is what I got first of all - the units on the Y axis just seem random from the data itself. I tried to format the cells to actually show minutes and seconds but maybe I've been overthinking it.

Edited July 10, 2019 by DrBeaker

[TTG_Alice]

You could use Powerpoint and insert 'chart' from the top ribbon and copy/paste the data from Excel

[hallb15]

Excel stores times in decimal format which can make it hard to work with when it comes to charts. By using the time format, excel is treating your 20mins and 30seconds as the time 20:30, i.e. 8:30pm. That's why the chart looks wacky.

 

It may be easier if you work in seconds, not minutes and seconds. So 20mins and 30seconds would be 1230 seconds. you can always add labels to the chart afterwards to show the minutes and seconds if your intended audience have problems reading it. Something like this:

[DrBeaker]

Excel stores times in decimal format which can make it hard to work with when it comes to charts. By using the time format, excel is treating your 20mins and 30seconds as the time 20:30, i.e. 8:30pm. That's why the chart looks wacky.

 

It may be easier if you work in seconds, not minutes and seconds. So 20mins and 30seconds would be 1230 seconds. you can always add labels to the chart afterwards to show the minutes and seconds if your intended audience have problems reading it. Something like this:

[ATTACH=CONFIG]54319[/ATTACH]

 

That's a good tip. Thanks.

 

How did you manage to get the time converted in Excel from minutes and seconds into total seconds? Are the labels in the column manual labels or a total from the cells?

[hallb15]

A simple formula

=(B3*60)+C3

multiplies the data in the minutes column by 60 and adds the seconds column to it.

 

To get the labels I cheated as there were only three entries on my example and typed in the labels manually

To do it with a formula you could use

=B3&"m "&C3&"s"