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In Excel, is there a way to graph multiple series from one column of data? I have lab values for patients. Column A is date, column B is patient identifier, and column C contains all the lab values. Without adding more columns, how can I graph lab values over time, patient by patient?

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A pivot chart might be the best solution for you to get the chart you are looking for.

A PivotTable report is useful to summarize, analyze, explore, and present summary data. A PivotChart report can help you visualize PivotTable report summary data so that you can easily see comparisons, patterns, and trends. Both a PivotTable report and a PivotChart report enable you to make informed decisions about critical data in your enterprise.

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Create or delete a PivotTable or PivotChart report

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  • I appreciate your input. It looks like it will work. However, it only works for <256 patients (columns of data) - and even then is really taxing the program (or my computer, which crashed a few times since I've been playing with this). Can you think of ways to graph out the data of >256 patients?
    – Andres
    Apr 8, 2014 at 16:44
  • Performance for Excel is limited to system resources available (RAM and CPU). What you are experiencing is Excel has it's limits. The only other solution I can suggest would be to break the data up into 256 patient sets or to use a database. Both are time consuming, but with the database, you could at least import your existing data into a table to run queries against.
    – CharlieRB
    Apr 8, 2014 at 17:20
  • I dont see how you could hope to get any insight from a time series chart with 256 series on it? Surely the result would be hopelessly muddled.
    – Mike Honey
    Apr 8, 2014 at 23:08
  • @MikeHoney Please explain your comment. You may be correct, but that is not the objective of this site. Rather than criticize the OP's approach, offer a suggestion with explanation to help the OP. The idea here is to be constructive, not just tell them they are doing it wrong.
    – CharlieRB
    Apr 9, 2014 at 11:49
  • @CharlieRB I'm just wondering what the desired output is. You could build a Pivot Table with dates across the columns and patients in the rows, then add a sparkline chart based on a row of data for the first patient. This can then be copied down to show a sparkline for each patient. This can easily give you > 256 chart series.
    – Mike Honey
    Apr 10, 2014 at 4:11
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You could build a Pivot Table with dates across the columns and patients in the rows, then add a sparkline chart based on a row of data for the first patient (Insert ribbon, Sparklines / Line button).

The sparkline has relative cell references, so it can then be copied down to show a sparkline for each patient. This can easily give you > 256 chart series. Here's an example:

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