OTish interactive web chart

If you've got Excel, you could create an X-Y Scatter graph of two columns: the dates and your weights. I tend to create a graph on a different worksheet to the one that has the data.

I've found that the simpler types of chart in Excel, such as line and bar charts, seem make the big assumption that the x-axis column has equally-spaced dates, which makes it useless for most graphs of a quantity versus time because you may not take readings every day.

I use X-Y Scatter charts to graph my car fuel consumption and per-litre price of fuel over time, and my electric/gas readings and outside temperature (from a weather station) over time; in the latter case, there is a very loose negative correlation between outside temperature and gas usage for central heating, though it's spoiled by the background usage of gas for the Aga, and occasional usage for showers, both of which are unrelated to outside temperature.

There is a downside of that type of chart: every time you add a new data point, you have to edit the formula for the chart to increase the scope of the graph so it shows that point. It's a shame you can't tell it to use all data points in the selected columns, for as many non-blank rows as it finds.

FWIW LibreOffice Calc isn't better. The date issue is the same and adding a couple of points to a chart is a major exercise. I suppose it could be simplified with a macro, but I haven't written a macro for over

Both LibreOffice and Google Sheets can plot extra points as you add then without editing the chart range, though I'm not sure I can set it up consistently! If you have the range longer than your data and insert a new row at the end for each point then I think it just makes the chart bigger each time. I have several charts, including weight, that just keep on getting longer automatically.

nib

This is why I have never found spreadsheets very useful, you have to enter such such complicated formulae it's painful.

As far as I have ever seen one of the major uses of spreadsheets is simply to display tabular data.

For serious calculations on the data a database always seems easier!

LibreOffice is available for multiple platforms (libreoffice.org) .

LibreOffice Calc is the Excel equivalent.

If you put multiple points in a table and select the table, "Insert: Chart" and you have a graph in view. See picture for details. Click to magnify. "Download original" to keep.

The difficult is what happens as the table grows new rows that weren't there when you selected the range and plotted a graph from them.

I've found that I have to edit the formula on the chart page to increase the range to include the newly-added row(s).

I reckon there's been an Excel (Mac, 2021) update since I last looked at this

- now it seems to plot the dates and data correctly, with proper spaces between dates. Just tried with column, scatter, and line.

You are a star!

That's the solution. Define the graph formula to include at least one blank row beyond the "growing point" of the table, and insert a new row while sitting on that blank row (it inserts it above that point) then copy the previous row (to copy any cell formulae that you may have defined) and change values appropriate for the new reading.

And the graph grows with it.

You've cracked it! I've been arsing about for several years, tweaking the formulae for the chart lines every day as I've added a new day's data. No need to do that any more. I feel a right wazzock (Yorkshire term!) for not thinking of doing that.

Just to make life amusing, in my case the spreadsheet is upside down: the latest date is on the lowest row and successively older data is on successively higher-numbered rows. My wife wanted it that way so the latest point was always on the same row, and she didn't have to scroll an arbitrary way down the spreadsheet to find it. Graphs handle that fine (I had to try it to convince myself!) so my graphs have a formula such as

=SERIES("Electricity",$A$11:$A$715,$G$11:$G$715,1)

where:

row 11 is the blank row row 12 is the latest row row 715 is the earliest row

column A is the dates column G is the electricity usage for that date

but although A11 is larger (latest date) than A715 (earliest date), the graph is still drawn the right way round with the earliest date on the left and the latest date on the right.

In my case, I "sit" on row 11 (latest date) when I insert above (so rows

The guys at Microsoft allowed for that situation!

I don't have that problem. Have you tried defining the chart as being one row more than your initial column of figures, including a blank row at the bottom?

Then certainly if you insert a new row above the blank line at the end of the figures the chart will extend its range to suit.

At least that works for me. I have a weight chart and a car charging record chart that do exactly that.

nib

Look at MyFitnessPal.It tracks food and exercise too. Web and app.

I intended this as an "introduction" to LO-Calc.

To do anything fancy, is a LOT harder :-)

And while there are various web pages for GNUPlot on the web, not all are aimed at neophytes. I guess that's the charm of the thing. It feels like "work".

Paul

The way I normally deal with wanting variable length ranges in Google sheets is to NOT specify and end row. So say your data are in A2:A15 at the moment, specify the range as A2:A - that then means from that start to the end of the sheet.

(You can also probably do it in excel with named ranges)

Not if you insert a row inside the data range, to put the new data in, the chart data range grows with the inserted row.

Ah, now that might be useful to know, for my fuel-consumption-since-new chart, which shows MPG of the last tankful, the average of the last five tankfulls, and long term average since new.

At the moment I have to go to the Data menu, select Chart Source Data, then carefully edit the entries. Fortunately on the Mac version of Office, they kept the menubar so I don't have to use the Ribbon rubbish. Inserting a row could allow me to avoid all that.