Is is me? Or is Excel 2007 Charting Lame?

[bdtmike]

Maybe I'm missing something. If so, let me know.
The process of creating a chart is unintuitive and cumbersome. A big
step backwards from 2003. The manual says to just select your data
and insert the chart. What I find is that 95% of the time, I have to
re-do the data selection. If I highlight two columns and insert the
graph, Excel thinks both columns are two different series instead of x
and y axis.

I create two columns, label one of them "X", one of them "Y". Put
some numbers below that. Now insert an XY chart. One would think
that it could figure out "2 columns selected...inserting an XY
chart....first column must be the X, second column must be the Y".
Nope. Excel thinks both are Series1 and Series2, with no X axis
selected.

Dumb!

What happened to the Chart Wizard?

 

[Jon Peltier]

I'm not happy with Excel 2007 charting. I find the dialogs cumbersome and
awkward, the ribbons unintuitively arranged, and the lack of the old chart
options dialog (and the wizard) to be a significant loss.

On the other hand, look at all the pretty colors!

- Jon

 

[bdtmike]

Yes, they are very pretty....once you finally get them right

 

[dparizo]

I'm guessing it's you. I think charting in Excel 2007 is greatly
improved.

 

[Jon Peltier]

Name one improvement that isn't eye candy.

- Jon

 

[dparizo]

Why doesn't "eye candy" count? That's what charts are.

But I'll name one anyway: the way charts are integrated into the Office
Suite has improved a ton. When I cut & paste a chart into Powerpoint, and
then later go back to edit the chart in Powerpoint, the ribbon in Powerpoint
gives me most (maybe all -- I'm not sure) of the options I would have
natively in Excel -- it's a real improvement for me. It's not eye candy --
it saves me a lot of time.

But again, in the case of charts, eye candy is important. Charts are
visual. When users look at a chart and get distracted because two colors
look too similar (something that happened a lot in Excel 2003) it's a
problem. Excel 2007 fixed that. It is eye candy, and in the case of
charting, it's important.

 

[Jon Peltier]

The OLE treatment of Excel charts in other applications was a pain, but
double clicking brought up the chart inside a miniature Excel instance, so
you could still do pretty much what you wanted with it. In addition, the OLE
chart was accessible by VBA, so your program could also make adjustments.
The new Office-wide charts seem to work pretty nicely, though I haven't used
them much. They are not accessible by VBA, however, which I've already found
to be a major disadvantage. Fortunately you can still use OLE techniques in
Office 2007.

FWIW, there's more than enough eye candy in Excel 2003. You can change the
palette to prevent problems with colors being too similar. You shouldn't
need more than 56 colors, really. Dealing with colors programmatically was
also much easier in 2003 than in 2007.

The rest of the eye candy, all the new gradients, the shadows, the glowing
effects, the bevels and other 3D effects, are all just gratuitous
formatting, which is more likely to detract from, not enhance, a chart. It's
easier than ever to make a bad chart, faster than ever before.

Charts are not about eye candy, they are about visualization to facilitate
information analysis and transfer. Charts are about communication, about
science and statistics and engineering. Eye candy is about marketing and
emotion and distraction.

- Jon

 

[dparizo]

OK, then using your distinction between visualization and eye-candy, I'll
name a huge improvement that's not the latter:

Good use of color is obviously key to good visualization, and Excel 2007
uses color way better than Excel 2003. You said I could "change the
palette." Never mind that selecting colors is a skill I don't have: in 2003
I would have to, and in 2007 I don't -- so that's an improvement.

"Office-wide charts." You said in 3 words what took me 30. Another
big improvement.

Those two alone are a big step forward for charting in Excel 2007. I stand
by my point.

----------

 

[Jon Peltier]

Good use of color is obviously key to good visualization, and Excel 2007
uses color way better than Excel 2003. You said I could "change the
palette." Never mind that selecting colors is a skill I don't have: in
2003
I would have to, and in 2007 I don't -- so that's an improvement.

You're correct. The themes are an improvement over the earlier palettes. So
far I've found that the themes are harder to automate, but I may get better
as I gain understanding of the underlying methodologies. Too bad the
documentation is so vague.

"Office-wide charts." You said in 3 words what took me 30. Another
big improvement.

The lack of programmability of these objects in other applications makes
this a big step backward. If you don't care about programmability, then it
doesn't matter to you. I do care about programmability.

- Jon

 

[dparizo]

Good points. Thanks for the dialog.

You're correct. The themes are an improvement over the earlier palettes. So
far I've found that the themes are harder to automate, but I may get better
as I gain understanding of the underlying methodologies. Too bad the
documentation is so vague.


The lack of programmability of these objects in other applications makes
this a big step backward. If you don't care about programmability, then it
doesn't matter to you. I do care about programmability.

- Jon
-------
Jon Peltier, Microsoft Excel MVP
Tutorials and Custom Solutions
Peltier Technical Services, Inc. - http://PeltierTech.com
_______

 

[Brian Reilly, MVP]

Jon, You might want to check in with Steve R and Shyam on this. We can
all help each other here I am sure. See you in another NG. And maybe
you might want to show up on our monthly conf. call. Next one is Feb
13 at 1 pm EST.
Brian Reilly, MVP

 

[Jon Peltier]

Brian -

We went through this shortly after Office 2007 went RTM. There are apparent
properties and objects in the OM, and apparent help topics, but nothing
actually gets executed in VBA. There seems to be a gap in the hierarchy, and
the chart properties are the red-headed stepchildren in all of this.

- Jon

 

[Gklass]

One improvement that isn't eye candy:

The log scaling. (before you could only do base 10)

Let me think of another one ...
Thicker lines, well that is eye candy but it is nice

 

[Jon Peltier]

True, you can pick the base of the log, which to me doesn't seem to matter
much or make much sense, and you can pick the min and max, which do matter a
great deal. I wish they allowed better control over tick spacing and
labeling.

Net result: a gain of at best 10% in log scale functionality.

- Jon