Can’t find the Chart Wizard? No worries

re: Can’t find the Chart Wizard? No worries

honest_abe — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 17:04:00 GMT

re no chart wizard being "an-improvement" - you Microsoft people have to stop believing your own B.S. The product goal should be to achieve a high level of usability across a broad spectrum of users, not just an incenstuous coven of Excel wonks the product team obviously got all its design direction from. "Broad spectrum" includes people like me who used Excel 2003 wizard periodically to iteratively "feel" my way thru creation of a relatively sophisticated worsheet integration and charting during the course of a project - WITHOUT knowing a whole lot about Excel. Dubious "congratulations" also on removing context sensitive help. Rather than removing wizards and context sensitive help, Microsoft should improve them. Office '07 and '10 are steps backwards from Office '03. How 'bout the MS product "geniuses" create some real marketing buzz by coming up with "revolutionary new concepts" of Wizards and context sensitive help in Office '13?

re "Unfortunately, it didn’t make sense to update the Chart Wizard to incorporate the many changes that were made when the chart engine was rebuilt for Excel 2007" - just tell the truth: "...the Excel '07 & '10 project team was too far behind a marketing-driven schedule and had to sling some new slop out there so we dumped the wizards without regard for the customers..." Microsoft revenue stream wins, Microsoft customers lose.

re: Can’t find the Chart Wizard? No worries

MartinRiddell — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 19:18:54 GMT

The removal of the wizard is a huge step backwards for Microsoft! Using the wizard I could complete a complex and customised charts with a minimum of fuss. Now, because of your blasted ribbon I need to do at least double the number of clicks or key strokes. Having read all the other blogs here, it is clear that Microsoft is simply not listening to what the market wants! For goodness sake, sort it out before Open Office and other providers begin to be the norm. I am an advanced user of Microsoft Office and, until the introduction of the ribbon and abolition of the "Old", perfectly logical Menus, felt Microsoft had done pretty well in evolving their products in line with logical thinking - frankly, you've lost it!

re: Can’t find the Chart Wizard? No worries

dcardno — Mon, 07 Feb 2011 06:03:50 GMT

"It’s a bit of a shift, but once you get used to the ribbon, it’s really quite simple."

MS has imposed the damned Ribbon on us for what, four years, now? And still, we have "once you get used to it..." it doesn't completely suck. Let's face it - the Ribbon is a *significant* step backwards in User Interface and user experience.

I am a *very* serious Excel user, and on my personal laptop I have XL 2007 installed (no choice - when I bought, that was the only option) and at my client site I still use XL03. Despite ~four years of steady use of XL07, the interface is slow, confusing, non-intuitive, and worst of all - for practical purposes, non-customizable (don't kid yourselves or your users about the QAT - it is a pathetic joke - but compared to the Ribbon it is a Godsend). When you "the chart engine was re-built" did yoiu *deliberately* try for blurry, fuzzy output?

It is a little rich that while I like XL07 for processing speed, I re-installed XL2K so that I have a graphics engine that works, "re-built" or not, and without the damned Ribbon, which I use when I need presentation-quality charting output to paste into a document.

re: Can’t find the Chart Wizard? No worries

bcas — Sat, 05 Feb 2011 18:03:24 GMT

I've been using Excel 2010 for about 8 months now. At first I thought the ribbon bar seemed cumbersome and confusing - especially for charting. Now I am sure that it is.

For example, I used to be able to right click and on my charts and easily update a data range. Now the data range in the same simple chart is "too complex to be displayed". That is true even in a very simple chart that uses just four columns by 52 rows. It wasn't too complex for Excel 2003 and older versions.

Another example is that the old wizard made it very quick and easy to build a simple two-axis chart. I find it much more time consuming to build a similar chart with the ribbon bar. At first I thought it was just me but, after seeing the comments and talking to others, I'm beginning to think that, in some respects, the new interface is inferior to the old.

I have found that, in many sections of the ribbon bar, there is a button in the lower right corner that opens something similar to the old interface. This would be a nice addition to the Chart Tools part of the ribbon.

re: Can’t find the Chart Wizard? No worries

srrobertson — Sat, 05 Feb 2011 15:38:25 GMT

Need help w/ charts. My work generates data that I place on a chart daily. I come up w/ a chart that covers a whole year. I cannot seem to post new data to my chart that was so easy w/ the earlier version of Excel. Can someone help.

re: Can’t find the Chart Wizard? No worries

Dianads — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 19:35:01 GMT

I cannot emphasize enough just how much I HATE and LOATHE everyting about Windows 7 and the new Office. I had. No. Choice. It was a corporate decision to upgrade and now I have to waste my freaking short work time to discover there is no damn chart wizard any more, indeed I need a damn tutorial to make a chart now. Can I say damn on this site? Well for my home computing I SHALL switch to a damn MAC. ASAP.

re: Can’t find the Chart Wizard? No worries

012399 — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 00:49:05 GMT

I like the new ribbon for 2011, etc. I have "lost" a feature when I upgraded to 2011 from 2004. How do I print an embedded chart (only the chart) in 2011/

re: Can’t find the Chart Wizard? No worries

Oaks45 — Wed, 05 Jan 2011 17:02:22 GMT

I was thinking that, I'm an Excel pro (that was with Excel 2003), but since you introduced the 2007 & 2010 virgin, I got lost!!!

re: Can’t find the Chart Wizard? No worries

Robert — Wed, 05 Jan 2011 01:02:56 GMT

Please bring back Chart Wizard. I'm not an advanced Excel user and I like to make quick, simple charts. The ribbon is a confusing mess for anyone who wants to "get in and get out". The chart wizard was great when you wanted to get a quick look at your data. Now, I have a hard time just figuring out how to label a chart. You guys made a huge mistake removing the Chart Wizard.

re: Can’t find the Chart Wizard? No worries

Johan — Thu, 30 Dec 2010 19:03:32 GMT

Good Afternoon. To whom may be able to help: what I cannot find in the new version is the "ADD SERIES" which formerly was under "Source Data" option under the right clock drop-down. I believe this was also under ChartWizard step 2, "Series" tab. thank you in advance.