Excel 3-D Pie Chart Flaw & Test

[Drew]

I believe there is a flaw with the boarders on 3-D pie charts in Excel 2007.
Try to enter some data - say 6 names with unequal percentages that sum to
100%. If you chart this data using a 3-D pie chart and give the pie itself
and the pieces of pie black boarders the boarders are very jagged. These
jagged boarders are easy to see in a zoom view or if you print the pie chart
out. Thank you in advance to anyone who can test this in Excel 2007 (the
problem did not exsist in Excel 2003).

Thanks,
Drew

 

[Jon Peltier]

There is a conceptual flaw with 3D pie charts specifically, and with pie
charts in general. Pie charts do not convey data clearly, but they are so
familiar, people do not notice. 3D charts reduce the clarity of the data
they present, but people again are too familiar with them to notice. The
combination of 3D and pie charts can only be made worse by exploding the pie
or using multiple pie charts.

- Jon

 

[Drew]

Jon,

Thanks for your response. I agree with the fundamentals of your replay but
my question is much simplier than you may think. First, I need to use a pie
chart. Second, I know for a fact that this problem did not exist in Excel
2003. My conclusion is that either there is a trick to getting boardered 3-D
pie charts to work correctly in Excel 2007 or Excel 2007 has a bug.

Drew

 

[Jon Peltier]

I'm leaning towards bug. However, they changed a lot of the way that charts
and shapes are rendered, so the official response may be "feature". I don't
like the way exported charts, or pasted-as-picture charts look in 2007.

- Jon