I am building a benchmarking study of 176 electric utility companies, and want to create comparisons based on performance within deciles (top 10% down to bottom 10% based on specific benchmark performance). For each of the 100 utilities there is a three letter acronym, and the desired charts should compare utilities based on seven different benchmarks (one involves Inventory as a % of Revenue, and the other six involve Operations or Maintenance expenses in electric Distribution, Transmission or Generation as a percent of each of these three asset area's $ value).

The problem is, when I try to graph the bell curve type distribution of these utilities with the acronyms showing, I just get an unreadable blur of labels across the curve. What would work is if I could put each 3 letter label in its own box, and for each decile, have it stack the acronym boxes under that "column" of the bell curve alphabetically.

I am almost ready to resort to mechanically building this in an Excel worksheet itself using VLookup or some IF statements off the data column against the label column. But does anybody think there is an elegan way to create this kind of graph directly in Charts?

Thanks.

How about using custom data labels?

Use the appropriate formula in a cell to get the TLAs for each decile
using CHAR(13) as the 'line feed' value. Then, use Rob Bovey's
Chartlabeler (www.appspro.com) or John Walkenbach's Chart Tools (www.j-
walk.com) to add those cells as data labels to your chart. Position
the data labels as desired for the best aesthetic appeal.

--
Regards,

Tushar Mehta
www.tushar-mehta.com
Excel, PowerPoint, and VBA add-ins, tutorials
Custom MS Office productivity solutions

In article <1C2EA388-B142-4ED8-935D-(E-Mail Removed)>,
(E-Mail Removed) says...
> I am building a benchmarking study of 176 electric utility companies, and want to create comparisons based on performance within deciles (top 10% down to bottom 10% based on specific benchmark performance). For each of the 100 utilities there is a three letter acronym, and the desired charts should compare utilities based on seven different benchmarks (one involves Inventory as a % of Revenue, and the other
six involve Operations or Maintenance expenses in electric Distribution, Transmission or Generation as a percent of each of these three asset area's $ value).
>
> The problem is, when I try to graph the bell curve type distribution of these utilities with the acronyms showing, I just get an unreadable blur of labels across the curve. What would work is if I could put each 3 letter label in its own box, and for each decile, have it stack the acronym boxes under that "column" of the bell curve alphabetically.
>
> I am almost ready to resort to mechanically building this in an Excel worksheet itself using VLookup or some IF statements off the data column against the label column. But does anybody think there is an elegan way to create this kind of graph directly in Charts?
>
> Thanks.
>

Peter -

What you describe can be done, but it requires VBA or a lot of manual
tweaking.

- Jon
-------
Jon Peltier, Microsoft Excel MVP
Peltier Technical Services
http://PeltierTech.com/Excel/Charts/
_______

Peter wrote:

> I am building a benchmarking study of 176 electric utility companies,
> and want to create comparisons based on performance within deciles
> (top 10% down to bottom 10% based on specific benchmark performance).
> For each of the 100 utilities there is a three letter acronym, and
> the desired charts should compare utilities based on seven different
> benchmarks (one involves Inventory as a % of Revenue, and the other
> six involve Operations or Maintenance expenses in electric
> Distribution, Transmission or Generation as a percent of each of
> these three asset area's $ value).
>
> The problem is, when I try to graph the bell curve type distribution
> of these utilities with the acronyms showing, I just get an
> unreadable blur of labels across the curve. What would work is if I
> could put each 3 letter label in its own box, and for each decile,
> have it stack the acronym boxes under that "column" of the bell curve
> alphabetically.
>
> I am almost ready to resort to mechanically building this in an Excel
> worksheet itself using VLookup or some IF statements off the data
> column against the label column. But does anybody think there is an
> elegan way to create this kind of graph directly in Charts?
>
> Thanks.