Chart formatting problems

[Alegria]

Version: 2008 Operating System: Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) Processor: Intel Running Office 2008 on Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard

I am having problems with chart formatting (specifically formatting data labels). I've made all the changes I want and I can save the file, yet when I close it down and reopen it, the changes are lost. For example, I've changed the font type, size and color of my data labels and have rotated them 90 degrees counterclockwise but even after saving my changes, the document reverts to Excel's standard font and rotates my data labels horizontally.

I am actually trying to paste the charts into a Word document. I'm using straight copy and paste because it provides the best resolution (the image is hazy when I paste it in as a picture - am I doing something wrong here?) but of course because the charts are linked, the changes also revert in Word (even if I make the changes from within Word).

This is my doctoral thesis and I don't have much time to for formatting glitches so close to submission. I'd be very grateful for any help.

 

[Eric Waldbaum [MSFT]]

Hello,
Sorry to hear about this, but thank you for reporting it. Could you please be specific on what chart type you are using, what file type are you saving as (for example, .XLSX), and what specific version of Office 2008 you're using? Is it 12.2.3? (Excel menu->About Excel) Are you using OS 10.5.8 (Apple menu->About This Mac)? Can you reproduce this from scratch and if so what steps would you use to consistently reproduce this? I hope your thesis goes well.

-Eric
MacOffice Testing
Microsoft

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Version: 2008 Operating System: Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) Processor: Intel Running Office 2008 on Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard

I am having problems with chart formatting (specifically formatting data labels). I've made all the changes I want and I can save the file, yet when I close it down and reopen it, the changes are lost. For example, I've changed the font type, size and color of my data labels and have rotated them 90 degrees counterclockwise but even after saving my changes, the document reverts to Excel's standard font and rotates my data labels horizontally.

I am actually trying to paste the charts into a Word document. I'm using straight copy and paste because it provides the best resolution (the image is hazy when I paste it in as a picture - am I doing something wrong here?) but of course because the charts are linked, the changes also revert in Word (even if I make the changes from within Word).

This is my doctoral thesis and I don't have much time to for formatting glitches so close to submission. I'd be very grateful for any help.

 

[John McGhie]

I wish I had a magic wand here: generally, once an Excel workbook corrupts
itself, it's cactus, there's no good way to save it.

You could try saving as .xlsb format (Excel Binary). Various complex things
work better (or at least, faster...) in XLSB format.

Failing that, I suspect that the internal object store has collapsed, and
you would need to save back to CSV so you get only the data. Loose all the
formulas and charts. Oh, joy!

Be aware when playing with charts that WORD can't do slanted text unless you
paste as a picture (which annoys everyone!). Hopefully, the next version of
Excel Mac will enable Word to slant text.

Hope this helps

Hi Eric,

Thank you for your reply. I am running Office 12.2.3 and OS 10.5.8. My
updates are set to automatic so I'm assuming these are the latest versions.

The chart is a basic single axis column graph and specifically the data labels
in the left-hand column (series 1) are problematic. However, I have just
replicated everything starting from scratch in a new Excel worksheet and in a
new Word document and the problem no longer persists.

I can't believe I didn't try that sooner! So it would appear one of my
documents, likely the Excel workbook, is corrupt. Can you advise me on the
best way of rectifying that? Can I simply copy all of the data worksheet by
worksheet into a new workbook?

My Excel document is the bare basics of a larger database. I run my analyses
in SPSS but Excel's charts are so much better (save for the inability to
create box plots - sorry, just thought I'd chip that in!) so I have a copy of
my database in Excel. This has made the document rather cumbersome even
though I stripped it down to its bare basics (limited calculations) and it is
only 236 Kb. I mention this because it has been the problem with all of my
Excel (and for that matter Word) documents which seem to function poorly
(slowly and multiple crashes) after a certain size limit is reached, or
sometimes if I try to manipulate a copied chart or image too often.

In general there are resolution problems pasting or inserting ANY image or
chart into Word that has been copied or saved as an image in another Office
document, but I was reading another thread yesterday that explained the copy
and paste function is native to the OS and not very compatible with Office.
Copy, cutting and pasting as a picture results in a very low resolution image
(even when printing) but so far, tests would suggest that copying as an Excel
chart or a PDF provides better resolution overall.

Probably way more info than you needed - but I would certainly be grateful for
advice on how to resolve the bug in my workbook.

Thanks ever so much! After two years on a Mac, as much as I love living virus
free, the tweaks and bugs (I can't count how many times Office has crashed in
the last month, let alone last year) is likely to drive me back to a PC...!

This email is my business email -- Please do not email me about forum
matters unless you intend to pay!

 

[Alegria]

Thanks for your advice John. I no longer need to extensively manipulate the data in Excel and at this point really only need a dozen or so graphs from the original data, so I'll try to copy each subset into a new worksheet. If worse comes to worse, the subsets are small enough that I can input the relevant data anew. Thankfully, as I mentioned the original database is in SPSS, so at least I'm not losing my original work.

I'm not sure about the slanted text, but it accepts a 90 degree rotation perfectly well which suffices for my needs (I'm just adding the data labels into the end of the bars)... fingers crossed no further problems crop up!

Thanks everyone!