I am not sure I totally understand the problem but here is a suggestion
Suppose the data looks like the first two columns here
x y y'
1 0 2
2 3 5
In the third column I have the formula =b2+2
Then I select all the a column; hold down CTRL, select all the C column, and
make the chart from these two columns
best wishes
--
Bernard Liengme
Microsoft Excel MVP
http://people.stfx.ca/bliengme

"Alex" wrote in message
...
Every once in a while I need to plot some spectral data. Because it's not
very often and it's just simple plots, I can't justify to my boss the
purchase of fancy and expensive plotting software programs (SigmaPlot,
Origin, etc.). However, I can't figure out how to one thing in Excel:

I have data with x being time and y being some value. Also, there are many
points with y=0. I want to plot an xy scatter graph with a smoothed line
connecting the points. However, because most points are at y=0, most of
the
plot is hidden by the x axis. Problem is solved if I set the y minimum at,
say, -2 but then the axis numbering starts at -2 instead of 0. How can I
set
the minimum at -2 but have the numbering begin at 0?