Formatting Graphs for a paper....

[MrPeteNaturally]

I'm attempting to make whole lot of different graphs look good, and
similar for a paper I'm writing, where I want them to be in grayscale.

The present example is that I'm making column graphs of four or five
different items in each graph, and I'd like each graph to have similar
display properties, and have the same legend entry for each similar
item across the graphs.

So, for example, I'm trying to show how fast apple, orange, avocado and
banana trees grew, in two different plot, but avocado only shows up in
one plot. Despite this, I want apple, orange and banana to have the
same legend symbol in each chart, without having to go through and set
it manually.

If that's not possible, I'd still at LEAST like the columns to look
good in black + white, which at the moment they don't since they're
narrow bars, and the fill patterns are very hard to diferentiate.

Thanks!
-Pete

 

[JE McGimpsey]

I'm attempting to make whole lot of different graphs look good, and
similar for a paper I'm writing, where I want them to be in grayscale.

The present example is that I'm making column graphs of four or five
different items in each graph, and I'd like each graph to have similar
display properties, and have the same legend entry for each similar
item across the graphs.

So, for example, I'm trying to show how fast apple, orange, avocado and
banana trees grew, in two different plot, but avocado only shows up in
one plot. Despite this, I want apple, orange and banana to have the
same legend symbol in each chart, without having to go through and set
it manually.

If that's not possible, I'd still at LEAST like the columns to look
good in black + white, which at the moment they don't since they're
narrow bars, and the fill patterns are very hard to diferentiate.

For consistent display properties you can set one chart the way you want
it (see "Create, share, or delete your own chart types" in XL Help),
then apply the chart type to all the others.

You could either use a macro to set your symbols, or, to get the same
symbols by default, use the same number (and order) of columns (with the
same headers/labels), but enter

=NA()

for all the values in the columns that you don't wish to display data
for.