Comments on: Gas Prices – Interactive Time Series

By: Jon Peltier

Jon Peltier — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 13:26:28 +0000

Note: Wynand has emailed me the workbook, and I found nothing unusual. The best I could do was scratch my beard and say, in my most authoritarian tone, “Excel is like that sometimes.”

By: wynand

wynand — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 11:07:08 +0000

must be some version or settings issue, allthough I’ve neverseen this with any other chart before. Have you noticed what I’m describing or is it just my workbook displaying this?

By: Jon Peltier

Jon Peltier — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 10:53:41 +0000

Wynand -

The “Gas Prices Line” workbook has no animation, just some dynamic formulas that change when you select a different region in the listbox. I’m not sure from your description what is happening.

By: wynand

wynand — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 05:50:05 +0000

Jon, sorry for still hounding you, but I still cannot figure out the animation of your own downloadable workbook ‘Gas Price Line’. Maybe it is my version of Excel (2003). Could it be the scales or data itself? I could not find any code or settings that provides this effect.
The animation I’m referring to occurs when I click in the chart or in the adjacent cells next to the cells or when I alternate sheets. Almost like refreshing the chart.
I have tried to duplicate this with my own data and had no luck.

By: Steve

Steve — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 20:44:44 +0000

Thanks again for the help Jon. The light finally came on and I was able to get it to work. I have looked at the Flowing Data link and saw the static chart on oil prices and thought it would be “neat” to try and make this chart a dual axis with the secondary axis charting the price of a barrel, idea being to track the gas price to the oil price. When I tried to convert the chart to a dual axis, everything went kinda crazy. The chart had a legend and some of the series was in there twice. I did not change of the ranges to include Oil as I wanted the interactive capacity to stay the same for the gas part. Maybe that’s where my thinking goes wrong.

Still, its a good learning exercise

By: db

db — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 05:23:42 +0000

Jon, it looks nice, but it is a little hard to make out the extent of the differences because of the scale.

Sometimes I find it is better to chart differences, ie show values for the chosen region less the national average (or as a % of it). Then you can see more detail, and you can fit all the regions quite easily on one chart.

I would also use a running average over several periods to smooth the line out a bit, because it is trends that matter, and the weekly data is noisy.

By: Jon Peltier

Jon Peltier — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 22:41:25 +0000

If you are using a forms listbox, its linked cell contains the index of the selected item. A controls listbox puts the selected value itself (the text label) into its linked cell. My controls listbox linked to cell A1, and C1 populates with a Match formula to get the index. Your forms listbox should link to cell C1, and A1 should have an Index formula to put the applicable label into cell A1.

By: Steve

Steve — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 22:35:50 +0000

Noticed though that I am getting an odd result. On the 2nd sheet in cell C1 where the Match formula is, that changes to a value whenever I click on another selection in the Listbox. Strange–it completely overwrites the formula with the value. I have used a Listbox from the Forms toolbar, so wonder if that has something to do with it. And I can’t figure out what the range RowIndex is for–yet.

Still troubleshooting myself, but having the formula over-write is weird and my value in cell A1 on that same sheet is a number, and not the text label that it should be.

By: Steve

Steve — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 22:19:15 +0000

Thanks for your help! The site is very helpful and reworking some of the graphs to fit my own test data helps stretch my knowledge of Excel. Much appreciated.

By: Jon Peltier

Jon Peltier — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 20:50:05 +0000

Steve -

I’m using Excel 2003. The listbox is from the Controls Toolbox, so it’s an ActiveX control, not a Forms toolbar control. On the Controls Toolbox or Visual Basic toolbar, click the button that looks like a draftsman’s pencil and triangle. Then right click on the control and choose Properties. Enter a cell address or range name for the LinkedCell and ListFillRange properties.