plotting chart with year from a date column

I have a flexmonster chart with some date fields. Now i have two requirements for the date fields
1: Date in table view should be a single column (not divided into day, month and year)
2: I should be able to plot chart on year (or month) from the date field
For the first requirement, I set the date type to be 'date string' but now i am not able to plot by year and if i set date type to 'date' it will allow ploting chart by year but will show date as 3 columns (day, month and year) hence failing first requirement.
How can i achieve both of the above requirements