Comments on: Chart Event to Highlight a Series

By: Interactive Chart in VBA using Mouse Move Event | da TaB is On

Interactive Chart in VBA using Mouse Move Event | da TaB is On — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 07:54:32 +0000

[...] code to achieve this entire effect has been give below. The original code developed by Jon Peltier can be found here. [...]

By: jeff weir

jeff weir — Thu, 07 May 2009 22:01:46 +0000

That’s nice work, Ajay. I’d suggest a slight change…do away with the text box saying what market the user is looking at on 2 counts:
1) It’s really distracting when you’re mousing over lines before you actually select anything. An empty box appears, and moves around even when you’re mousing over empty space on the graph. Maybe this is perculiar to Excel 2007. But its really distracting
2) It doesn’t add any info to what appears on the graph and what appears in the series ‘tooltip’ after you mouse over a series. eg mouse over the NOV series and you get a tooltip saying “Series “NOV 1973″. If you change your series name to “NOV 1973 Bear market: here’s what took place” then that’s what would appear in the tool tip.

By: Jon Peltier

Jon Peltier — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 22:08:27 +0000

Ajay -

Nice job.

By: Ajay

Ajay — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 19:57:21 +0000

Jon, You may want to take a look at this graphic that appeared in the NY Times a few days back. (How This Bear Market Compares). It uses the pretty much same idea of highlighting a series as you've postulated here. I borrowed your code (and made a few minor modifications in the process) and took a shot at replicating it: How This Bear Market Compares - NY Times Your approach does provide an excellent alternative to charting multiple series in a line graph, especially where data points overlap, so that the final result is 'user-friendly'. Regards, Ajay

By: Da TaB is On » How This Bear Market Compares - NY Times

Da TaB is On » How This Bear Market Compares - NY Times — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 19:41:47 +0000

[...] the weekend, it tried to replicate this chart. Jon in one of his posts in his blog described how to use Chart Events to highlight a series. I took the [...]

By: Interactive English League Bumps Chart | More Information per Pixel

Interactive English League Bumps Chart | More Information per Pixel — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 06:53:11 +0000

[...] what about selecting data series in the chart, just by clicking on a line? Jon presented various ways to select a data series using VBA. I have to admit that I first thought that this VBA method would [...]

By: Jon Peltier

Jon Peltier — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 15:36:25 +0000

Andreas -

>>Not having this extra click in a dashboard would make the whole
selection, navigation user experience much smoother.

Very true. I usually envision this kind of interactive activity in a more intensive view than a dashboard, but it could also be part of a dashboard. I wonder if there are mouseover events of other objects (ActiveX controls, etc.) that could be brought to bear.

>>…set a Low-level Windows API hook, and to handle the Windows messages…

Oh, I hope it’s not that scary.

By: Andreas Lipphardt

Andreas Lipphardt — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 14:50:14 +0000

Jon,

>>not sure this “extra click” is really a problem
Not having this extra click in a dashboard would make the whole
selection, navigation user experience much smoother.

>>I don’t know how to make the chart respond to events without it being active
I fear then the only way to do this is to set a Low-level Windows API hook,
and to handle the Windows messages and activate the chart when the mouse is over the charts area.

Andreas

By: Jon Peltier

Jon Peltier — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 14:08:27 +0000

Andreas - There are two senses in which you have to "activate" the chart. In one sense you have to make the chart the active chart. I don't know how to make the chart respond to events without it being active. I'm also not sure this "extra click" is really a problem. In the other sense you have to assign the chart to the code that makes the chart respond to events. You can make this automatic, using more code of course that instructs Excel to activate any chart in the active sheet whenever a sheet is activated. The technique works fine, and it is described in my article Chart Events in Microsoft Excel.

By: Andreas Lipphardt

Andreas Lipphardt — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 13:59:03 +0000

>>but you have to activate the chart, in order to make Excel handle your events,

Is there a way to workaround this?

Thanks,

Andreas