Force chart to display data in the order it is in the cells

Question

I have set up some data in Excel cells like this (this is just a small sample):

+-+------+------+------+------+
| |Jan-12|Jan-13|Feb-12|Feb-13|
+-+------+------+------+------+
|a|59353 |36543 |46535 |45672 |
+-+------+------+------+------+
|b|70002 |65480 |53407 |66579 |
+-+------+------+------+------+
|c|10181 |25290 |8618  |13843 |
+-+------+------+------+------+

I've arranged it like this so that when I make a bar chart I will see the year-on-year comparison of the months. However Excel insists on rearranging their chronology and shows me me the dates from 2012 to 2013 chronologically (jan 2012, feb 2012, march 2012...). How can I display the dates exactly as I have them in the table?

Answer 1

Select the vertical axis, Format Axis -> Axis Options -> Axis type -> Text axis.

You will probably see that the default is Automatically select based on data.