problem in line diagram- Messy line diagram

I'm sure we can come up with a solution, but we (or, at least I) have no idea what you mean by "it looks messy and un-understandable." What do you need your chart to show that you believe this chart is not showing?

In some ways, it feels like we are getting into a circular discussion. I ask you what you want me to understand from the chart, then you ask me what I understand from the chart, and we can keep going around in that circle ad infinitum.

Perhaps to further the discussion, a few observations (you tell me what these things mean to you).

1) My first question when looking at the graph was "what does "net" mean?" I guessed that it would be the difference between the dollar and the pound series, and a quick look at the formulas in the table confirmed this guess (with the exception of a few entries). This idea made perfect sense to me.

The main difficulty with this is that you have a few entries where the values are large, but most of the entries are between 0 and 5000. It makes it difficult to really see what is going on when the values are small, but it really depends on what you are trying to show with this chart. If you are trying to highlight those few entries where the values are large, then it does just fine. If you need to visualize both the regions where the values are small and the values are large, Jon Peltier discusses this issue and proposes a panel chart solution: http://peltiertech.com/broken-y-axis-in-excel-chart/

2) One thing that looks totally wrong to me is your X axis (and your use of a scatter plot). You show a numeric x axis (formatted as currency), but the x axis data is coming from column A -- a series of text strings. Upon recognizing that your "x values" really represent "category number", this is not a major impediment to understanding. I can see the values for USD, POUND, and NET for category 1 (then I need to go to the table to see what 'category' corresponds to category 1). I would suggest a reveiw of the differences between line and scatter charts: https://support.office.com/en-us/art...rs=en-US&ad=US and the differences between category and value (and date) x axes: http://peltiertech.com/Excel/ChartsH...ValueAxis.html

Beyond that, I don't see anything really wrong with your chart. As I indicated, a lot really depends on what you want the reader to see in your chart. Perhaps these observations will help you explain better what you want people to see in your chart.

One more option to consider (but first do spend some time on "x-axis issue" - point 2 in MrShorty post) is to use different types of plots. May be 2 main series could be presented as bars, and net as line?

And second suggestion: Look at your data and think of sorting it. May be on one of main series? USD? The output looks much more ordered. But is it easier to read?