How Excel plots dates on a chart axis

This is a little strange and maybe even confusing.

In many cases, this is just fine.

The axis shows an accurate distribution of the data.

However, there may be times where you want a simple, even distribution.

In that case, you could switch the punch in to text.

Now the data points are evenly spaced, and line up with the dates shown on the horizontal axis.

Notice that even though the axis pop in is now text, Excel still understands the dates.

For example, I can apply a different date format, and the chart immediately updates.

Let’s look at one more example.

Then enter January 1, 2001 as the minimum and Jan 1 2018 as the maximum.

I can then apply a custom date format to show only the year in the horizontal axis.