Comments on: Image File Type Comparison of Exported Charts

By: Jon Peltier

Jon Peltier — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 00:17:22 +0000

Good detective work. I guess the exports weren’t bad enough, so they messed with the image sizes.

By: Eric

Eric — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 23:02:15 +0000

Jon,
I compared the difference of PNG/GIF files generated by Excel 2003 and 2007 when saving spreadsheet as htm formats.

PNG/GIF files in the files folder from both 2003 and 2007 look very clear.
PNG/GIF files from 2007 are larger in resolutions and the htm codes generated by Excel resize them to fit into the original dimensions as seen in Excel.
This is when the blurriness happens.

It almost feels like someone from MS can change the parameters fairly quick to fix this issue but who knows how long or if this problem will ever be resolved… :(

Thanks a lot for your explanations. And your blog is very informative and helpful!!!

By: Jon Peltier

Jon Peltier — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 00:13:02 +0000

I can think of two reasons for the blurriness.

1. The size that the HTML code uses as the dimensions of the images is not the same as the dimensions of the image files. The pictures are not shown at their true size, and some blurring occurs as they are mushed into the allotted size.

2. IE itself provides additional antialiasing or blurring.

By: Eric

Eric — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 23:13:10 +0000

Jon,
Say… I save an Excel workbook as Report1.htm
Inside the “Report1_files” folder generated by Excel, charts are saved in “PNG” format which are bigger in size than and also almost as clear as original Excel Charts.

I think the problem happens when Excel generates the html text. PNG pictures look fine but for some reason I do not know, pictures look blurry in IE

By: Jon Peltier

Jon Peltier — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 22:33:59 +0000

Eric – What format are the image files that Excel saves? Save As HTML produces HTML files with the text, and embedded in them are image files. Are these images PNG, GIF, or JPG? I can imagine the JPGs looking atrocious.

By: Eric

Eric — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 22:11:18 +0000

Hi Jon –

Thank you so much for such quick response.

At work, we extensively use Access/SQL to pull and manipuldate data, dump data into Excel templates and call Excel VBA to generate charts/reports, publish workbook to web servers or save Excel as htm on web servers so that reports and charts are refreshed and pubished automatically.

Regular line or bar charts look similar or are of very little visible difference between Excel 2007 and 2003. Some user like the slight blurrines created Excel 2007’s graphic engine.

But for charts that are complex or that have a lot of information (for example, in one chart there are dual axis, mutiple series of different chart types – lines, bars, areas, labels, text boxes…etc) the blurry effect can become a problem… :(

These complex charts saved as PNG file look as good as original Excel charts. But if I save these workbooks with charts as htm format and post it on a web server. Charts look blurry and out of focus when you open the file in Internet Explorer.

I also noticed that in Excel 2007, recording macro of certain activities, such as importing pictures, changing picutre object format settings cannot record any VBA codes…

I miss the Office 2000 to Office 2003 upgrade :)

By: Jon Peltier

Jon Peltier — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 20:43:38 +0000

Hi Eric - I've actually blogged about this issue in Why I don’t like Excel 2007 charts. Some people don't agree, but apparently you and I think that this new look is fuzzy and out of focus.

By: Eric

Eric — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 20:34:57 +0000

Jon:
Thanks for the analysis.
At work I use Excel to generate very complex charts and then save as htm format. After the company upgrated to 2007, I notice immediately that charts inside Excel-based htm files looks very blurry as if it loses focus.
I wonder if you have come across this problem. If yes, could you repsond and share some of your thought or solutions?

Thanks,
Eric

By: Image File Type Comparison of Exported Charts - Learn Excel

Image File Type Comparison of Exported Charts - Learn Excel — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 14:36:26 +0000

[...] Original post by Jon Peltier [...]

By: Jon Peltier

Jon Peltier — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 22:24:18 +0000

John -

I was being flip. I know they completely rebuilt the charting facility from the ground up. I know it was a lot of work, yet they didn’t quite finish. I’m continually finding things that didn’t get implemented quite the same as before.

What I meant is that the only apparent changes were in the formatting options, and in the dialogs, which don’t seem as inclusive or effective as the old ones.