3d line charts cause Excel 2007 to crash

[Guest]

This is more of a bug report than a question (I've not been able to find a
standard place to report bugs in Office 2007, the Connect site is for
developer products such as Visual Studio etc).

3d line charts which work perfectly well on a pc with Excel 2003 cause Excel
2007 to hang when opened on my Vista pc with Excel 2007.

I hope this is something which can be fixed when Service Pack 1 is released
for Office 2007, as it is a very useful chart feature which we (and our
clients) use a lot in one area of our work, and it may prevent our clients
from migrating from Office 2003 to Office 2007.

 

[Jon Peltier]

Yet another reason to avoid 3D charts.

- Jon

 

[Guest]

I'm afraid that comment is of no value to me: in the real world there are
more than 2 dimensions and a 3D graph is much more useful to display 3D real
life data (in this case how mortality improvements are expected to vary both
by age and calendar year) than hundreds of separate 2D charts. This is one
of those cases were a picture is worth a thousand words, and 3D charts
genuinely add value in situations where a variable depends on 2 other
variables and not just one.

 

[Jon Peltier]

Use a 2D clustered column chart, or a line chart with multiple series, one
for each category which is not related to the main category axis. You can
show what you want in at most two of either chart. Or design the charts so
that you can use an array of small copies, or "small multiples". The
categorical dimensions make as much sense if separated by series as by some
hard to conceptualize distance in an imaginary third dimension. Your screen,
and the printout, are only 2D. The effects of perspective and parallax make
values and even trends difficult to perceive in 3D charts, rendering their
added value questionable at best.

- Jon
-------
Jon Peltier, Microsoft Excel MVP
Peltier Technical Services, Inc.
774-275-0064
208-485-0691 fax
(e-mail address removed)
http://PeltierTech.com/
_______

 

[Del Cotter]

I'm afraid that comment is of no value to me: in the real world there are
more than 2 dimensions

In the real world of data, there are more than *three* dimensions. If
you need a spatial metaphor to represent a dimension, you're screwed the
first time you encounter a data set with four dimensions or more.

Experienced consultants like Jon can render for their clients four or
more dimensions on a two-dimensional piece of paper, with greater
clarity and punch than anyone can achieve with a "3D" Excel bar chart.

 

[Guest]

I respect that you are a Microsoft MVP, but I'm afraid that your suggestions
don't meet the demands of many real world situations in mathematics, science
or engineering. The 2D charts that you suggest fail to enable users to
identify patterns in the effects of the 2nd variable, please see (it is a
pity one images can't be posted here directly)
http://www.inqa.com/modules.php?set...ame=gallery&file=index&include=view_photo.php
for a current real world example in the field of mortality projection.

 

[Guest]

Jon is no doubt experienced in many aspects of Excel since he is an MVP, but
his comments so far (ie using 2D clustered column or 2d line graphs) have not
addressed the issues I have raised. Rather than saying there are ways of
showing 3 or more dimensional data without using 3D charts (but without, so
far at least showing anything that is better than a 3D chart), wouldn't it be
more constructive to address the issue, which is that since 3D charts ARE
part of Excel 2007 but currently cause it to freeze, it would be good if
Microsoft fixed this in the next Service Pack or earlier?
(Incidentally, I did not suggest that 3d bar charts were useful, the title
of this post is about 3d LINE charts not bar charts.)

 

[Martin Brown]

Jon is no doubt experienced in many aspects ofExcelsince he is an MVP, but
his comments so far (ie using 2D clustered column or 2d line graphs) have not
addressed the issues I have raised. Rather than saying there are ways of
showing 3 or more dimensional data without using3Dcharts (but without, so
far at least showing anything that is better than a3Dchart),

Your least bad option for the sort of bulk 3D data that you want to
plot would be a contour diagram or false colour image of the dependant
variable as a function of calendar year and age.

wouldn't it be
more constructive to address the issue, which is that since3Dcharts ARE
part ofExcel2007 but currentlycauseit to freeze, it would be good if
Microsoft fixed this in the next Service Pack or earlier?

Does it freeze in all cases even for trivial small test data, or just
for specific large datasets?

Your other alternative is to avoid Excel 2007 altogether until they
fix the bug.

Regards,
Martin Brown

 

[Guest]

:
Martin - thank you for the response.

Your least bad option for the sort of bulk 3D data that you want to
plot would be a contour diagram or false colour image of the dependant
variable as a function of calendar year and age.

How do I produce these 2 types of charts using Excel 2007? I've tried the
standard types, including Scatter and Area but they don't produce what is
needed.

Does it freeze in all cases even for trivial small test data, or just
for specific large datasets?

Your other alternative is to avoid Excel 2007 altogether until they
fix the bug.

My full data set has 20,200 numbers (101 rows [ages] by 200 columns
[calendar years]). Experiments show that freezing doesn't occur for trivial
small data, but it does start to occur (at least on my Dell Inspiron 9300
notebook with a 2GHz Pentium M processor and 2GB of RAM, running Windows
Vista Ultimate) with more than 4000 numbers (e.g. 20 rows by 200 columns),
getting progressively worse of course as the volume of data increases.
For the moment, we are avoiding producing 3D graphs in Excel 2007 (we can
use Excel 2003 on other pcs for such graphs).
The key issue for us here is to make sure (contrary to Jon's and Del's
comments so far which are not helpful because they give the impression that
3D graphs are not important, I'm afraid that is just plain wrong) that
Microsoft is aware that this is an important issue which needs to be fixed.

 

[Jon Peltier]

I agree with Martin's suggestion that a contour or surface chart is probably
the best option. 3D line charts can be among the ugliest 3D options, though
I admit the page you linked to shows a relatively useful implementation.
Contour and surface charts are indeed available in Excel 2007, just scroll
through the various chart type options. They are also painfully slow in
2007, by the way. Also, the stupid shadowing of the surface charts in 2007
make them more difficult to interpret.

A great many people have upgraded to 2007 without testing their most
important work on it first. The excruciatingly slow chart rendering for
"large" (i.e., small in 2003) data sets is a well known issue with Excel
2007. Microsoft knowledge base article kb938538
(http://support.microsoft.com/kb/938538) describes a recent hotfix which I
found improves the problem somewhat, though it's still way slower than in
2003.

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

:
Martin - thank you for the response.

Your least bad option for the sort of bulk 3D data that you want to
plot would be a contour diagram or false colour image of the dependant
variable as a function of calendar year and age.

How do I produce these 2 types of charts using Excel 2007? I've tried the
standard types, including Scatter and Area but they don't produce what is
needed.

Does it freeze in all cases even for trivial small test data, or just
for specific large datasets?

Your other alternative is to avoid Excel 2007 altogether until they
fix the bug.

My full data set has 20,200 numbers (101 rows [ages] by 200 columns
[calendar years]). Experiments show that freezing doesn't occur for
trivial
small data, but it does start to occur (at least on my Dell Inspiron 9300
notebook with a 2GHz Pentium M processor and 2GB of RAM, running Windows
Vista Ultimate) with more than 4000 numbers (e.g. 20 rows by 200 columns),
getting progressively worse of course as the volume of data increases.
For the moment, we are avoiding producing 3D graphs in Excel 2007 (we can
use Excel 2003 on other pcs for such graphs).
The key issue for us here is to make sure (contrary to Jon's and Del's
comments so far which are not helpful because they give the impression
that
3D graphs are not important, I'm afraid that is just plain wrong) that
Microsoft is aware that this is an important issue which needs to be
fixed.

 

[bmurphy]

Dear Patrick,

If you have Mathcad, you may already know it can produce 3d charts
Excel cannot (will it ever?).

Mathcad charting has its own limitations, too. But if its 3d charts
fit your needs, try the excel addin from the mathcad web site. It
enables you to get mathcad's 3d charts right on an excel worksheet,
plotting data from the worksheet.

Brian Murphy