Brain blocked !! Making a chart

[MelanieB]

One of my supervisors asked for a line chart, and for the life of me I cannot figure it out. I am sure I am brain dead!

I have a list of seminars. There are several seminars each month over a 2 year period. I need a line chart showing the number of seminars held each month and a comparison of the number of seminars each month between the two years. But, she doesn't want the actual seminars in the chart, just the number of times per month that any semiar was held.

My data looks like this. In this example, she wants to see that there were 4 seminars in January 2013, 2 in January 2014, and 4 in Feb 2013 and 2 in Feb 2014, etc.
She wants the chart to look like what I have attached. How do I do this and why is something so simple making my head hurt ? lol

Dal 1/2/2013
Dal 1/10/2013
Dal 1/21/2013
Dal 1/22/2013
Daw 1/23/2014
Dal 1/23/2014
Dal 2/8/2013
Dal 2/12/2013
Dal 2/12/2013
Dal 2/12/2013
Mik 2/13/2014
Mik 2/19/2014
Dal 3/5/2013
Dal 5/3/2013

[HansV]

You can do this with a pivot table and pivot chart.

Step 1: Create a pivot table based on the data.
Add the date column to the Row area and the seminar column to the Values area:

S0151.png

(Note: the dates in the screenshot are in European format, but that doesn't matter for the end result)

Step 2: Group the dates.
Right-click any of the dates and select Group... from the context menu.
Select both Months and Years, then click OK:

S0152.png

Step 3: Move (drag) the Years field to the Columns area:

S0153.png

Step 4: Create a pivot chart.
Click anywhere in the pivot table, then insert a line chart:

S0154.png

If there are dates for all months, the chart will look more like the one in your attachment.

[MelanieB]

Wow. Ok so I wasn't as brain dead as I thought. I tried doing the Pivot table, but I didn't get as far as you just showed me. Thank you, Hans. I will recreate this, using your instructions. Thank you!