Charting I – Professional charts, made easy

re: Charting I – Professional charts, made easy

David Gainer — Tue, 18 Apr 2006 00:33:11 GMT

Jamie - no change there unfortunately.

Karim - this is possible for some types (i.e. Pie), but not bar, at least not without a workaround (like putting shapes on the chart).

re: Charting I – Professional charts, made easy

Karim T. — Mon, 17 Apr 2006 11:23:19 GMT

Will the bar chart have the capability of adding data elements (in the datasheet) as labels e.g. bar chart that shows growth in revenue for different product group over 5 years and then over each year revenue, I want to show the product revenue % relative to the corresponding year (while keeping the chart scaled by revenue).

re: Charting I – Professional charts, made easy

whyily — Mon, 17 Apr 2006 09:10:23 GMT

it looks so different!

and maybe hard too

if not ,it's just name changed to 2007,it works the same and looks more beautiful,just so?

re: Charting I – Professional charts, made easy

Shane Devenshire — Sat, 15 Apr 2006 23:28:19 GMT

Justin - its pretty easy already:

1. Create a chart from all of your data

2. Select one of the series you want displayed as a different type and choose Change Chart Type from the Design ribbon.

Similar technique works in earlier version of Excel.

Jamie - It looks to me as if the new version support the same number of data points as the old version - 32,000.

re: Charting I – Professional charts, made easy

Shane Devenshire — Sat, 15 Apr 2006 22:38:26 GMT

Hi all,

Box & Whisker charts can already be created in Excel, in fact many variations. Create one and then save it as a template chart, (I assume we can do that in 2007 although I haven't tested yet).

Shane Devenshire

re: Charting I – Professional charts, made easy

Shane Devenshire — Sat, 15 Apr 2006 22:35:29 GMT

What are charts really all about? Eye candy? For those really interested in this issue I suggest looking over any or all of the books by Edward R. Tufte on this question.

re: Charting I – Professional charts, made easy

Jamie Baranec — Thu, 13 Apr 2006 23:10:40 GMT

Hi David

Has the limit on the number of cells allowed for charting been increased over Excel 2003? I wanted to chart US Census data by Census Tract (~64,000) but it failed. I was force to take a 1 to 5 sampling in order to chart the data.

Thanks

re: Charting I – Professional charts, made easy

David Gainer — Thu, 13 Apr 2006 01:45:06 GMT

Hi everyone – thanks for the comments. This isn’t going to be the only post about charts, so bear with me.

Graham, The core object model is largely unchanged. Solutions that used the Excel 2003 chart object model will still work. We have added new object model for new features such as applying templates, chart layouts, styles, and OfficeArt formatting for chart elements; e.g. glow, shadow, etc.

Dave, Justin, Andy, Vic, Nathan, Harlan, HEK, Greg, everyone else, thanks for the suggestions. Please take a look at the public beta when it comes out shortly and give us your specific feedback.

Andy, no 3D scatterplots. I like your idea about historical vs forecast – it is something we have talked about, but not something we had time for this version.

Paul, I think your copy/paste scenario will improve a lot in Office 2007. More on that in a later post. This version, the quick layouts are not customizable.

Helen, we looked at a wide variety of sources, including business publications, textbooks, scientific journals, etc. The goal is to provide a wide variety and allow the user to select the style most appropriate to their situation. Again, interested in your specific feedback when the public beta is available.

re: Charting I – Professional charts, made easy

Greg Hingsbergen — Wed, 12 Apr 2006 22:33:19 GMT

I, like Helen, try to adhere to most of the tenents of Edward Tufte when creating charts.

I want my charts to be as effective as possible at **communicating**, not at looking pretty.

I don't mind all of the bells and whistles - I just won't use them - but please try to incorporate as much as possible to help us 'Tuftians'!

Help us increase the information-to-ink ratio!

One example, axis labels at the values of the data points, not at predetermined every-n increments.

re: Charting I – Professional charts, made easy

HEK — Wed, 12 Apr 2006 19:58:53 GMT

Charting is all about data visualisation. The new looks are definitely a leap forward to produce them professional and "eye candy", now supporting >>56 colours, transparancy, glow. I personnaly like what Stephen Few is saying about this (www.perceptualedge.com) and no doubt there are many others who understand the business of data visualisation.

It wd be great if Excel cld provide assistance in the choice of colours (e.g. suggesting colours with optimal contrast) - but in the end Excel is just a tool. It's the user who decides waht and how to proesent information.

However, I fully agree with Helen that these stunning looks may be counter-productive when the user is offered (too) many great-looking options without any guidance in how to bring across the message effectively. Maybe Microsoft could provide help here in white papers alike help files for the less talented among us? Anyway, I can hardly wait when Excel 2007 will be available.