Reader and contributor Ulrik Willemoes writes in the following request for Excel help.

I am looking for some feedback on a rather basic visualization. I wish to display a parts-to-whole relationship over time. I know stacked bars or areas do not work because of the jiggered baselines, so what are the alternatives? I am doing the visualization in Excel, but I think the general discussion of what would be good practice in this case would be interesting, no matter what tool you use.

The Excel workbook contains a a sample dataset and my three takes on a solution. I have already dismissed Solution A, but could Solutions B or C be useful? What other alternatives might there be?

Thanks for any feedback/thoughts!

PS: I know you’re not supposed to connect categorical data like in solution C, but I think the line does give a sense of the distribution of the categories that is otherwise is missing…