Creating a drawing from an Excel chart

[Jinny]

Is there a way to create a drawing from an Excel chart?
This is for an economics class; we are allowed to just use
paper and pencil but I want to learn more about my software
anyway and this is a good excuse. I need to construct
assorted "cost" curves and then demonstate various
relationships among them with construction lines and
highlighted areas. Since my ability to create free-form
curves with the drawing tools is negative, I would like to
create the basic curves by charting data, then create a
drawing from the chart so that I can add my construction
lines. I have MS Excel 2002. My help file tells me that
this can be done, but now how.

Thank you!

 

[Tushar Mehta]

Create the desired chart, then format the axes to 'none' (double-click
each axes, then from the Patterns tab set everything to None. Do the
same for the border of the chart area. Remove the legend and title
(click the item of interest and use the Delete key).

Of course, if you really want to learn about the software, it will
probably take you about the same time to figure out how to use the
drawing tools!

--
Regards,

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

 

[Jinny]

Thanks much! But . . . The problem is not with the
tools; rather with my ability to draw smooth curves with a
mouse! I tried your suggestion, and the result is still a
chart - which is to say, I still can't figure out how to
use the drawing tools to create my construction lines. I
would like to do the lines on the computer rather than just
printing out a copy & doing them with pen. So far the best
I have been able to do is to use the spreadsheet grid as a
graph paper substitute, draw my curves from the data table
using the "curved line" tool, and then draw the
construction lines. I had thought that if there were the
equivalent of a "paste special" option somewhere that would
paste a copy of the graph as a drawing or picture, rather
like the technique of pasting formula results as flat text
or numbers, I could then modify the chart as I needed.

 

[Tushar Mehta]

I'm quite lost as to what you want to do. But, to address the last
parts of your post:

1) select the chart, then select SHIFT+Edit | Copy Picture... | select
the as shown on screen option. Then, click any where in the worksheet
and use Edit | Paste to get an image of the chart.

2) with this image selected, from the Drawing toolbar select Draw |
Ungroup. You will, in all likelihood get a warning about converting
the object to a Microsoft Drawing object. Select Yes. Select Draw |
Ungroup again. Now, each of the image elements of the original chart
are at your disposal -- though, it is no longer a chart.

--
Regards,

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

 

[Jinny]

Thank you again - you're wonderful! Converting an Excel
chart to an Excel picture is exactly what I needed. For
example, suppose that I had a batch of data points that
charted to something that looked rather like a parabola.
What I needed to do then was to construct lines from the
minimum of the graph to the x and y axes to demonstrate the
coordinates of the minimum (such as, in my current case,
the minimum price you could charge for your widgets without
losing money -).