mduncan
Right click on the axis and choose "format axis" or something similar.
You can then choose a minimum for the scale... If you can't put a date into the minimum box (depends on the version of excel) then you will have to work out the number which equates to the day you want the scale to start from.
01/01/2010 is "40179" ... it has something to do with the number of days since 01/01/1900
To find the serial number which equates to a date the easiest way is to type something like:
=VALUE("01/01/2010")
into a cell. it will show the number which excel considers to be equivalent to the date you've put in the speech marks.
Teppic