Column Chart - X axis too thin because of MANY categories.

[Mike]

I'm brand new to Pivot Charts and trying to figure out what I thought
would be simple: I have a Column Chart with $Sales for the Y axis and
Salesperson on the X(category) axis. There are hundreds of
salespeople, which results in the chart displaying extremely thin lines
with totally unreadable category labels( salesperson initials). Is
there not a way to specifiy a gap between categories on the X axis? Or
some way to space them apart and be able to scroll the chart
horizontally? I have a feeling you are all going to tell me scrolling
is just a dream

TIA,

-Mike

 

[Mike]

Hmmm, no replies. Maybe I posted in an inappropriate forum?

 

[Andy Pope]

Hi,

Scrolling the pivot chart will be. But you could create your own chart
based on the pivot table which can be scrolled.
You need to create a dynamic chart using named ranges. Here is a
collection of links on the topic.
http://peltiertech.com/Excel/Charts/DynamicChartLinks.html

And I have a scrolling example here
http://www.andypope.info/charts/Scrolling.htm

Cheers
Andy

 

[Mike]

Thanks Andy, I will check out that link...

I am still quite amazed that Microsoft made such a potentially powerful
tool(pivot charts) so limited. My scenario of salespeople(or any
category) along the x-axis, and sales dollars along the y-axis seems so
commonplace. Yet try to display more than about 50 categories along
the x-axis and you have a pretty much useless chart Maybe I am the
first person to want to do what seems like such a simple pivot chart
application? I doubt it Hopefully Microsoft will add a zoom or
scroll feature in future versions...