Missing Features in Excel 2008!?

[Berrington]

I was running Excel 2008 on Macbook Pro with Leopard 10.5.1. When I tried to add Y error bars on my column chart, I found that there is no way to customize the error bars. The "custom" feature in Excel 2004 (Mac) and 2007 (PC) is somehow missing in Office 2008.

Any suggestion?

Hi, I bought the excel 2008 version and it is completely worthless to me without custom error bars. Do you know when there will be a fix, and whether or not you can obtain a refund (since I am unable to use it in a meaningful way?

-Bill

 

[Bob Greenblatt]

Hi, I bought the excel 2008 version and it is completely worthless to me
without custom error bars. Do you know when there will be a fix, and whether
or not you can obtain a refund (since I am unable to use it in a meaningful
way?

-Bill

You ought to be able to get a refund. However, Microsoft is aware of this
issue and supposedly will have a fix soon.

 

[Jim Gordon MVP]

Hi, I bought the excel 2008 version and it is completely worthless to me without custom error bars. Do you know when there will be a fix, and whether or not you can obtain a refund (since I am unable to use it in a meaningful way?

-Bill

Hi,

There have been some posts from Microsoft people in the newsgroups that
have suggested that it's a good idea to frequently use Help > Check for
Updates.

They have not been specific about a date, but the broad hint seems to be
"pretty soon" which is vague about when but I conclude it's fairly
certain that an update is on the horizon.

-Jim

 

[Carl Witthoft]

Hi,

There have been some posts from Microsoft people in the newsgroups that
have suggested that it's a good idea to frequently use Help > Check for
Updates.

They have not been specific about a date, but the broad hint seems to be
"pretty soon" which is vague about when but I conclude it's fairly
certain that an update is on the horizon.

-Jim

I suspect the OP was exaggerating, but if the graphing function was the
only thing he cared about in the first place, why use Excel? Grab any
of a bunch of decent graphing tools which do include error bar control.

 

[Jim Gordon MVP]

I suspect the OP was exaggerating, but if the graphing function was the
only thing he cared about in the first place, why use Excel? Grab any
of a bunch of decent graphing tools which do include error bar control.

Hi,

Error bar support in Excel has been standard for over a decade, so it's
likely just a bug that error bars aren't working.

Why learn a new tool when you already have one you know well? This
person probably has lots of workbooks with charts with error bars
already in them, so it would make sense to expect them to work in the
current version and not spend time converting them to something else.

-Jim

 

[Kent Thomas]

Does anyone know when an update will come out that will allow us to change the
x axis labels for Excel 08??

It is stuck on the standard integer scale.
Is there anyway to select data for the x scale like in office 07!?!?!

No, we do not know when (or if) this will be changed. Have you looked in the
chart formatting section of the formatting palette from the tool box?
[/QUOTE]
Actually you can change the x-axis labels. It's written somewhere in this or in another post but you have to do it manually in the formula bar.
This option is not (yet) accessible via the menu/toolbox.

Edit:

I have found the following solution on another forum (after wasting more than an hour on this):

here's how to do it (explanation courtesy of Bob Greenblatt, there's no way I could have figured this out on my own!):

To specify a range of cells as the labels on the X axis, click on one of the data series in the chart (for example, click on one of the colours in a bar chart).

When you do, you will see a range appear in the floating formula bar. In my case, the range in the formula bar was:

=SERIES(Summary!$A$5,,Summary!$B$5:$R$5,3)

The space between the two commas is where the X axis labels are specified. In my case, for whatever reason, Excel didn't pick up the labels when I created the chart. I added the range of cells containing the X axis labels (cells B3 through R3) like so:

=SERIES(Summary!$A$5,Summary!$B$3:$R$3,Summary!$B$5:$R$5,3)

Problem solved!

The challenge, of course, will be to remember how to do this in a few weeks. I can't believe that MS figured that was easier than the old way (where there was a clearly-labelled field in which a user could specify the range). :eyeroll: :eyeroll: :eyeroll: :eyeroll:[/QUOTE]

Thank you, thank you, thank you! this was driving me CRAZY - I'm so glad you found this an published it!

 

[D Canaday]

I was running Excel 2008 on Macbook Pro with Leopard 10.5.1. When I tried to add Y error bars on my column chart, I found that there is no way to customize the error bars. The "custom" feature in Excel 2004 (Mac) and 2007 (PC) is somehow missing in Office 2008.

Any suggestion?

I agree this is a major flaw. In fact in my line of work (medical research) this makes this version of Excell completely not usable. I have to find on old version until they fix this.

 

[JE McGimpsey]

I was running Excel 2008 on Macbook Pro with Leopard 10.5.1. When I tried
to add Y error bars on my column chart, I found that there is no way to
customize the error bars. The "custom" feature in Excel 2004 (Mac) and 2007
(PC) is somehow missing in Office 2008.

Any suggestion?

I agree this is a major flaw. In fact in my line of work (medical research)
this makes this version of Excell completely not usable. I have to find on
old version until they fix this.[/QUOTE]

It's fixed - update.

 

[Dane]

I wanted to make an ordinary line chart. As typically I want to have the dates (years) to which my values belong on the horizontal (category) axis. In Excel 2004 this could be done in the data editor for the chart. In the tab "Series" data could be selected for the category axis labels. In Excel 2008 the data editor for charts is modified, the two tabs are merged, but the option to select data as labels for the category axis is missing. Without this option I cannot create the most ordinary diagrame with Excel 2008, just when I started liking it.

Any answers for this problem?

I have the exact same issue with no Y error bars, and no EndNote.
This update is completely useless for science writing and analysis.

 

[Jim Gordon MVP]

I have the exact same issue with no Y error bars, and no EndNote.
This update is completely useless for science writing and analysis.

Hi

Install Service Pack 1 and the problem should go away.

-Jim

--
Jim Gordon
Mac MVP

MVPs are independent experts who are not affiliated with Microsoft.


Visit my blog
http://blog.360.yahoo.com/blog-i7JMeio7cqvhotIUwCzaJWq9

 

[John_Jones]

With SP1 I still see no custom error bar options, I don't see any updated topics in the help describing the supposedly corrected issue. Does anyone actually have this working or are they just reading from the release notes? Is there a help topic on it? Do I need to recreate the chart? Start a new worksheet what?

 

[JE McGimpsey]

With SP1 I still see no custom error bar options, I don't see any updated
topics in the help describing the supposedly corrected issue. Does anyone
actually have this working or are they just reading from the release notes?
Is there a help topic on it? Do I need to recreate the chart? Start a new
worksheet what?

This works for me:

XY Scatter Chart. Right/CTRL-click the series, choose Format Series. In
the Dialog, select the Error Bars Pane and either X or Y bars. Choose a
Display (other than None) and select the Custom radio button. Click
Specify Value. Enter + or - values (or both).

 

[Jay Chen]

come on just give Mac users Data analysis, microsoft can do this, come on!

 

[JE McGimpsey]

come on just give Mac users Data analysis, microsoft can do this, come on!

If you want to send a message to MS, use Help/Send Feedback...

None of your fellow users that post here can implement Data Analysis.

OTOH, users have (many times) posted alternatives to the wizards in the
ATP (all the *functions* are now part of XL itself).

The major downside to these alternatives is that you need to actually
know what you're doing with the statistical analysis, rather than just
following a cookbook.

 

[Jasonology]

Just installed Office 2008 and came to use Excel. Can't find the following
that were in 2004, can any one help?
1. Print Preview command button

Doesn't exist - all print functions are performed by the OS, including
print preview.

2. Page break view

Also doesn't exist any longer - Page Layout view accomplishes most of
the same features. I suspect that their research mirrors the Win side in
that only a small minority of users understood and used Page Break view.[/QUOTE]

I've got a user that really missed it this morning! She had terrible trouble understanding the 08 way of manipulating Page Breaks. In particular the lines that represent the breaks are now only 1 pixel wide and black and are easily lost in a busy (read: ugly) spreadsheet. There does not seem to be a way to change this.
Also gone (in Page Break View) is the huge gray text that showed you each page number. Is there anyone else missing this? :neutral:

 

[Jai]

I must admit that I made a big mistake in assuming that Office Mac 2008 would have more features than 2004. Well I was new to the Mac side and already had plenty of other transitioning to do that I wasnt paying attention.

However, I find it appalling that Find and Replace command does not allow searches within Formulas. This is just too basic a functionality to ignore.

As for my macros, I will have to continue to use my Parallels Desktop!

 

[Bob Greenblatt]

I must admit that I made a big mistake in assuming that Office Mac 2008 would
have more features than 2004. Well I was new to the Mac side and already had
plenty of other transitioning to do that I wasnt paying attention.

However, I find it appalling that Find and Replace command does not allow
searches within Formulas. This is just too basic a functionality to ignore.

Of course it does! Find and replace within formulas works just like it
always has. What are you doing, and how are you doing it? What is Excel not
doing that you think it should do?

 

[Annoyed_and_then_some.]

Just adding my two penneth worth to this discussion.

Some really obvious stuff is missing from Excel 2008 on the Mac.

Things like be able to automatically align data labels (you used to be able to choose if you wanted them inside, outside a bag, aligned centred etc.).

Also, there seems now, no way to reference a title for a Chart, again a simple thing that you could do in earlier version of Excel.

Excel 2008 for the Mac is more about what's missing than new features. Another disappointing product from Microsoft.

 

[Bob Greenblatt]

Just adding my two penneth worth to this discussion.

Some really obvious stuff is missing from Excel 2008 on the Mac.

Things like be able to automatically align data labels (you used to be able to
choose if you wanted them inside, outside a bag, aligned centred etc.).

Also, there seems now, no way to reference a title for a Chart, again a simple
thing that you could do in earlier version of Excel.

Excel 2008 for the Mac is more about what's missing than new features. Another
disappointing product from Microsoft.

Have you looked at the chart options in the formatting palette? Click on the
toolbox icon in the menu area and then select the chart. You will find most
of what you think is missing here.

 

[Annoyed and then some]

Hi Bob,

Thanks for the reply, I have been onto Microsoft Technical Support for both of these issues and they have confirmed that both are 'missing' from the Mac Excel 2008.

However, I WANT this to be wrong, can you tell me where in the Toolbar I can align labels etc. and also how you can reference a cell for a chart title, as I cannot find these anywhere in Excel 2008 for the Mac.

Thanks again for the response,

Annoyed and then some...