Intraday Time Series Charts

re: Intraday Time Series Charts

Dave S. — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 23:49:58 GMT

@Scott Ruble

I believe the point that Harlan was making about the functional relation is that the lines do not represent the change with time between the points. Change could be very irregular, but the lines make the change appear linear.

A column chart would better represent the data, unless column charts don't yet support irregular data.

I suggest a New Year's copy of Edward Tufte's work "The Visual Display of Quantitative Information." It's a must-read for anyone who wants to present readily understood information.

re: Intraday Time Series Charts

Dave S. — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 21:14:21 GMT

"For the next release of Excel, we are focusing on some of the primary concerns expressed by customers"

You certainly would not divulge the efforts at Microsoft, but may you list the primary concerns?

My primary concern is units of measure.

A very close second are sheets that are individually placeable on a page and are of limited size - instead of automatically being X columns by Y rows, they are only as big as the data they hold. This way a single page could have multiple work sheets.

What would make this complete is to have the column and row names be changeable so that one could create a statement like "=total(sales!extended)" where 'sales' is a sheet and 'extended' is a column on that sheet that is titled 'extended' where the user can see it.

With units, some values could be dollars, others yen, others euros and the total would be whatever currency format the user asked for. If one of the entries does not have a currency unit, the total would fail. Certainly for currency the conversions are not static and would require a means to update them, but for many other units - metric vs imperial, the units are static.

re: Intraday Time Series Charts

Scott Ruble [MSFT] — Sun, 30 Dec 2007 20:59:28 GMT

Is there a reason why you would use a time format on the second column? The “number of customers waiting” isn’t a time unit. As for why there are two series generated, the heuristics for determining the series don’t account for this data structure.

re: Intraday Time Series Charts

Cart — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 00:58:15 GMT

If both columns in the above example are in the format h:mm then selecting an X Y Scatter chart yields a two series line graph. Why?

re: Intraday Time Series Charts

patty — Sat, 22 Dec 2007 03:07:02 GMT

Yes Scott that is what I was talking about. Thank you.

re: Intraday Time Series Charts

Scott Ruble [MSFT] — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 20:00:43 GMT

Patty,

If I understand you correctly, you are referring to the actual chart in this blog. We use a blog tool that takes care of creating the hyperlink. As far as I know, PDF isn't involved. If I'm still missing your point, please post your email address and I'll correspond directly with you.

re: Intraday Time Series Charts

patty — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 01:00:34 GMT

Thanks for the information. Yes, I know how to hyperlink but I was wonderful about the above graph? Do you produce the link in pdf?

re: Intraday Time Series Charts

Scott Ruble [MSFT] — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 21:06:59 GMT

Patty,

In my example, there isn't a hyperlink on the red markers. However, there are a few different ways you can hyperlink to other charts/worksheets or drill on a chart.

Option 1

•Excel 2007 doesn’t allow you put a hyperlink on individual chart elements such as a data point. However, it does allow you to put a hyperlink on the entire chart area. Here are the steps:

1. Click on the chart area

2. Click on the Insert tab in the ribbon

3. Click on the hyperlink button in the Links group

4. Enter the relevant address and click OK.

•Now when you click on the chart, you will be navigated to the address specified. This approach is ok for when you want to provide supplementary information about a chart or provide a link to data that is in another workbook. To further edit the chart, you will need to remove the hyperlink because the hyperlink prevents you from clicking inside the chart. To remove the hyperlink, ctrl+click on the chart and then click on the hyperlink button in step 3 above to remove the link.

Option 2

•As noted above, Excel 2007 doesn’t allow you to put a hyperlink on individual chart elements. However, you can insert a shape or textbox and put a hyperlink on those items. For example, you could put a textbox label next to a data point or put the shape right on top of the data point with a hyperlink. The steps for this are largely the same as option 1, except the shape is the item clicked on in step 1. Keep in mind; however, that the inserted shape or textbox are not anchored to the data point. If the data changes, the shape or textbox won’t move. This can be addressed through VBA but I don't have an example readily available at this time.

Option 3

•There are several other options called out in Jon Peltier’s article on hyperlinks: peltiertech.com/.../Hyperlinks.html

Option 4

•To drill down on a chart, you can create a PivotChart with hierarchical data which provides similar drilling capability as PivotTables.

re: Intraday Time Series Charts

Scott Ruble [MSFT] — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 18:51:28 GMT

T. Kwetane,

There are many things in the works at Microsoft but I can't comment at this time on the specific details. For the next release of Excel, we are focusing on some of the primary concerns expressed by customers.

re: Intraday Time Series Charts

Veridique Internet Solutions — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 12:08:12 GMT

I hope you heave ideas for the question of Patty, because I'm looking for this solution to.