How can I create an x-axis on a Numbers line chart?

Thanks for both replies. Oddly I thought I was doing exactly what SGII said: I had two columns next to each other. The first consisted of dates (I see now that I really wanted a scatter chart - thanks to Badunit I appreciate the difference between line and scatter charts); the second column contained a set of values. I simply want the first column to be the x-axis and the second the y-axis. Here's a tiny extract.

If I select this bit of my spreadsheet and choose "Chart" and pick one of the scatter charts and do some simple tinkering, I get something displaying my data but in a very odd format:

I really just wanted the dates to be along the bottom and the amounts in the tank to be on the vertical axis. This must be possible but it's not very intuitive, is it? There are oddnesses, like you can elect to have a title, but there's no obvious way to include a meaningful character string other than the word 'title'; and where did my column headers go? You'd think you could double-click the horizontal axis and get into formatting and editing it, but that ain't so. I will look at the Template since the Help really did not help with this at all. But of course I would love to hear what I did wrong from those who know!

Thanks for all the help so far. I am trying my best to reduce the general problem to one very specific one: creating a scatter chart with the type of data I have already mentioned - a column with dates (destined to be the x - horizontal - axis) and a column with integers (y-axis), so that there's one integer value per date - the dates rise throughout the column but the intervals between the vary, which is why we need a scatter chart. I am assuming that I will be able to format the data as I wish. Actually I found that the form 2-Feb-21 is not a standard date format, so to simplify matters before starting the graph I reformatted that column in the form 2 Feb 2021 which is standard.

The information that I want to put on a graph is embedded in my spreadsheet which contains a lot of other data. I attach a screenshot where I've highlighted the bit I'm trying to be the source of my graph. You can see that I don't want to use the entire columns, just rows 2 to 34.

I selected my data area (including the column titles) and chose to draw a 2D scatter chart as recommended. The result wasn't what I expected (see next screenshot)

Obviously some of this is easily changed (for example the absence of lines between the dots), but I am still left with a very strange chart. Why does the 'y' axis go up to 60,000, even if the x and y are transposed? Where are my column headings?

Well, not to give up so quickly, I did all the editing that I could see was available. I re-transposed the columns, got the lines and values drawn in, named the axes - though not using the original texts at the top of the columns (they seem to be nowhere), but the critical problem is that I can't format the x-axis values -see screenshot.

One is offered various formats, but 'date and time' which is the one I want, is dimmed. It is therefore still a struggle. I do regard the requirement here as very simple, but I just can't crack it. Sorry, though, there is more.

To make this even simpler, I tried to paste just the values of both columns into a new sheet and create the graph from that data. It kind of worked, but only after I realised that column A could not be used! Putting the data into columns B ad C produced a recognisable chart where the x-axis is what I wanted it to be, but why? What's the difference between the two approaches, and why was the one based on embedded data transposed? I simply can't understand it. Also, it's not really a solution, as it only uses values and isn't really linked to the other data on my sheet. Anyway thanks to anyone who has stayed with me, and here is the last view of my final attempt.

Thanks for the good advice. I'm off on a trip for a couple of days so will not be able to follow up for a bit, but I will report back on this thread. By the way, I never used the menu to start my chart - I just clicked on the little chart icon at the top of the window. I thought there were several scatter charts because one is offered different designs, perhaps different colours. But I agree there is only one basic scatter chart.

Thank you for all that - I mean all the replies I've received in this thread.

It's back to school for me. For example, I didn't realise that the concept of a Table within a sheet really existed in Numbers. I have been trying to employ my intuition, coupled with my very out of date (30 years!) knowledge of Excel, which at one time was very extensive - I used to model entire businesses.

Sadly this mainly intuitive approach has not worked, and my attempt to use the Numbers Help material to answer very specific questions hasn't helped all that much either, because there are larger conceptual things one has to master first (like Tables - and how spreadsheets can be linked together, which I haven't yet started on!). I got on pretty well simply putting in data and making fairly elementary calculations, but everything else needs some kind of tutorial approach. Let's hope I find it in the templates as you suggest..

Anyway thanks for being patient enough to read what kind of problems I was having. I still don't really know why I had so much trouble with formatting a simple x-axis, but I see that creating an individual Table, albeit within a larger sheet, and creating a graph from that, is the way to go. And on the way I hope to understand what was so fatal about Column A in my second test. Well, it keeps your brain alive. Sincere thanks again for all the input.