Almost anything you can do in 2003 can also be done in 2007. It might take more swearing, but it usually can get done.

Make your chart with both series as lines. Right click one, choose Chart Type (2003) or Change Chart Type (2007), and change it to a bar. (Or start with both as bars and convert one to a line.) Right click one of the series, choose the Format item on the pop up menu, and change the axis to Secondary.

My one-liner (which is rare for me) that summarises MS stupidity: if the QAT is all the chance the average user has got of customising the interface, then why the hell isn’t there an EXCEL OPTIONS button on the effing home tab?

For example, I have spent hours trying to make four simple adjustments to a stacked chart. 1. Add a title that was not there before. 2. Remove the word date from the first place on the X-axis (This version of Excel thinks that the word Date is a “category” and not a label). 3. Overlay a differently formatted time series using the same X-axis. and 4. Adding some text boxes TO THE CHART explaining key points.

In 2003, this would take 10 minutes.

You will find A LOT of confusion about Excel 2007 compared to earlier versions. In many cases, people try something, it doesn’t work, and WITHOUT TRYING IT IN EXCEL 2003, they state that some feature is no longer available. I have tried to test my assertions in both versions before making any bold claims; I have surprised myself with my own selective memory.

You can in fact select discontiguous ranges. I think Kevin has misunderstood how this works differently within the same Excel instance and across different applications. If you ctrl+click areas of cells that follow a rudimentary selection pattern (see below), then Excel will treat this discontiguous range as if it occupies the smaller condensed range. However, if your discontiguous selection does not follow the rules I’ve spelled out, Excel will balk at most non-formatting operations regarding the selection. In addition, as soon as you try to use this discontiguous range outside of the Excel instance in which it was copied, the target application will treat the range as if it includes the unselected regions contained by the discontiguous areas.

Rules for “well-formed” discontiguous ranges:
You must be able to remove unselected whole rows and columns from between selected areas, so that the selection condenses into a single highlighted rectangle;
no cells may be selected multiple times;
all boundaries between areas must extend continuously across the selection.

What is the Ctrl-Drag method you are speaking of? Do you mean Ctrl+Select (which works), or something different? You can Ctrl+Select to select usable discontiguous ranges. You can also use Ctrl+Drag to copy contiguous ranges to another location. Neither of these behaviors have changed.

I have compared the behaviour of Excel 2003 and 2007 and find that the Ctrl-drag method which works in 2003 doesn’t work in 2007, as Kevin Lade says. Is there really no way round this?

Helen

If you copy the discontiguous cells, and paste them within the same Excel instance, only the selected cells are pasted. If you paste them elsewhere, the entire range is pasted. This behavior is unchanged from earlier versions of Excel.