Thanks jane-e, I appreciate your assistance. I set up file 1 in Excel. All columns are formatted as text. First column contains apostrophes to indicate text. Save it as a CSV. Set up file 2 in Excel. All columns are formatted as text. Save it as a CSV. Open up my pre-designed bar graph in Illustrator. Open the Properties panel and the Variables panel. In the Variables panel, click Import and select file 2. Select the bar graph in the document. Select Graphs in the Variables panel. Click button to make graph dynamic, linking Graphs variable to graph object. In Data Set drop-down, select Data Set 1. Interestingly, even if the dates are formatted in the CSV as dates but I choose the spelled-out format, the data merges correctly...
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