How do I scale in-cell charts that use both pipe symbols and spaces? | Dashboards & Charts | Excel Forum

The purpose of the worksheet is to plan the overlap dates for seasonal employees over the next 12 months. I would like to produce an in-cell graph for each employee showing their start dates, duration of service, and end dates.

There are three dates involved: first_chart_date, then start_date and end_date for each employee. Using these, I calculate for each employee the number of days until she start and the duration of time they will serve.

Using the rept() function to create the in-cell bar:

=REPT(" ",days_until_start)&REPT("|",duration_of_service)

The problem with this bar chart is that the spaces are wider than the pipe symbol, so comparisons of start and end date are skewed.

How do I compensate for the width of the space? Is there another blank character that is the same width as the pipe symbol? I tried using periods, but even that is wider than a pipe.