Glad you figured it out.

The macro recorder in 2010 isn’t brilliant so much as finally putting in what they ran out of time for in 2007. Nice to have it back.

Thank you, you’re a champion. I had a play around with the code and found this also works in excel 2007 and 2010.

Sub ChangeTransparency()
With ActiveChart.SeriesCollection(1)
.Format.Fill.Solid
.Format.Fill.Transparency = 0.5
End With
End Sub

You’re right. It seems that you can’t change the transparency of a series fill if it is on ‘automatic’, so that’s why it needs to be changed to solid or the .forecolor referred to.

I didn’t realise they reintroduced the ability to record chart macros in 2010, that’s brilliant.

Thanks again for the help!

Sub ChangeTransparency()
    With ActiveChart.SeriesCollection(1).Format.Fill
        .ForeColor.ObjectThemeColor = msoThemeColorAccent1
        .Transparency = 0.5
    End With
End Sub

I don’t know why you need the .ForeColor command before the .Transparency command, except that the formatting of the series was “Automatic”, and perhaps you can’t make an automatically formatted series transparent without applying a non-automatic setting first. Excel can be line that, and Excel 2007 especially.

In Excel 2003 and earlier, you’re stuck with the colors Excel offers, with no transparency. Excel 2007 introduced a lot of excessive formatting options, but a potentially useful option hidden in the visual noise is the ability to control transparency in chart fill elements.

Brilliant post. I’ve been using this method for a while now to display the time series for two groups. I use two graphs, one on top of the other.

I’m now trying to figure out how to automate the task. Is it possible to change the transparency of the a fill series using vba? If so, how?

Cheers. And thanks for the website in general. It’s an amazing learning resource.

The secondary axis is for the series that stay as areas. The series that will turn into XY series will not be moved, but will remain on the primary axis.

I was attempting to duplicate the chart using Excel 2007 and ran into a problem when moving the two value series to the XY chart. Excel moved both Area series to the primary y axis and grayed out the selection for moving them back to the secondary y axis. Any ideas on how to get around this?

It is possible to build a chart that shades the area differently depending on which XY series is greater, but it’s much more complicated. You need to allow for calculation of crossing points, which may occur between any two points arbitrarily. I’ve used the relevant technique in a couple other posts, Area Chart – Invert if Negative and Stacked Area Chart Challenge.

You need to bill them an extra hour for the explanation. Either it makes it worth your while to give the explanaton, or they decide they don’t really need to know.