Chart REALLY needs to support more than 255 data series

[Guest]

(FWIW -- This posting is via MS "Suggestion" feature, in turn reached via
Excel's help... so at this point I am totally confused about what the heck is
going to happen next -- submit suggestion? Post to usenet? Both??? Damned if
I can tell from this UI.)

Excel 2003 Chart continues to have a limit of 255 data series per chart, a
rather surprising kind and size of limitation in 2005, given gazigabytes of
memory etc. And a very nasty surprise if one has been counting on Chart to be
at least modestly scalable.

On big paper, with just a few points per series (generated via SQL query or
macro), it's very easy to need possibly 1000's of series. Particular example
here is for line charts and scatter charts (where each point occupies only
small amount of space).

 

[Jerry W. Lewis]

Presumably you intended to send this suggestion to Microsoft rather than
to other users who have no power to act on it. This is a peer-to-peer
newsgroup. Try
http://register.microsoft.com/mswish/suggestion.asp
or e-mail to
(e-mail address removed)
(e-mail address removed)
instead.

Jerry

 

[JE McGimpsey]

Jerry -

MS now encourages the use of these groups to post suggestions directly
to Microsoft. The Communities web access to these groups gives the
option of posting a "Suggestion for Microsoft" directly as a group
article.

See the "-select new post-" dropdown at

http://www.microsoft.com/office/community/en-us/default.mspx?dg=microsoft
..public.excel.charting&lang=en&cr=US

So MS doesn't think this is a peer-to-peer group any more, though I see
precious little evidence that they're not still treating it as another
black hole.

Once again, MS co-opting a perfectly good "standard" for its own
purposes...

 

[Jon Peltier]

Graham -

I have only once ever seen a chart with >255 series that was the least
bit legible, and I fixed that one by helping the chart author combine
many series with few points each into fewer series with many points. Is
that an alternative for you? Since you mention a macro, perhaps you
could format points different differently (not all points in a series
need be the same).

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

 

[Graham Wideman]

Well -- that was interesting! I finally blundered into this NG, only to
discover that I had already posted here... inadvertantly as a result of
logging a suggested improvement to Excel Chart... as noted by JE. Talk about
an unclear UI on *that* process!

Jon:

Nice to hear from you... I have gained much from your very informative
pages. And yes, after stewing about this for some days it did occur to me to
use fewer Chart Series and use subgroups of points to form the many "actual"
series that I need.

FWIW, as a proportion of all charts drawn, these may not be the most
numerous, however there *is* a need for many many series to plot raw data in
experiments where one has a respectable number of subjects (ie: over 255
and repeated measures (each subject has multi points).

The natural fit is to have one subject = one Chart Series. This way
attributes of the Series can represent attributes of the subject, such as
Series name = subject Id, Series formatting used for subject attributes etc.

Doing as you suggest is not *too* bad, but requires a bunch more programming
to set formatting on Points, and other housekeeping to turn off connecting
lines between last point of subject N and first point of subject N+1.

Anyhow, you'll likely be hearing more from me on this subject, but right now
I have to post another question on Chart trendline formatting...

Thanks again,

Graham

 

[Jon Peltier]

Graham -

You can leave a blank row between subseries in a series' data range, and
the connecting line will not be drawn. This must be a real blank, not a
formula returning "" or NA() or anything else, because even "" in a cell
means it isn't blank, it contains a short text string.

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