Brian -
You crazy PowerPoint guys with your fancy font formatting (not to
mention alliteration!). Can't you get by with Arial Narrow 10 pt???
All joking aside, I appreciate your comments. What makes this so
frustrating is Excel's stubbornness in allowing precision formatting of
its charts. When you have it almost working, you then come across some
variation that doesn't cooperate. Did you know you get different results
if you do the height and width in reverse order? The way I eventually
used *seemed* to be more reliable. You also get different results
depending on whether the chart is selected, or whether the chart object
is selected, or whether the chart is not selected at all. Most reliable
results come when the chart itself (the chart area) is selected.
Sometimes you need to run the program more than once; sometimes a
subsequent trial works, occasionally not.
I think most people would prefer a chart that was sized from the inside
out: plot inside area, then plot area, chart area, and finally whatever
chart object is required to fit it all in. But in Excel you need to
specify the container size (the chart object) first and foremost, and
each successive layer inside the onion has to conform to every prior
level of constraints. Finally, the most important dimensions, those of
the plot inside area, can't even be directly set, only through algebra
and iteration.
- Jon
