Comments on: Label Last Point for Excel 2007

By: Jon Peltier

Jon Peltier — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 10:59:58 +0000

Matt -

This code is for relatively simple examples that are amenable to labeling of just the last point. This approach is suitable for many charts. A lot of charts of real world data become too complex for this simple approach, and you have to resort to more complicated techniques. I like the callout method you cite which uses a two-point series, I’ve used it and variations for a long time.

By: Matt Healy

Matt Healy — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 03:07:34 +0000

Slick code, although I tend to pick which point I want to label manually because it’s hard to automate all the relevant considerations, like trying not to obscure data or labels from another series, trying to accentuate high/low/inflection/otherwise interesting points, etc, etc.

One of my favorite tricks is to add a small data series and then label one of its points merely to draw a callout — the big advantage over manually putting a shape there is by using an added data series it will automatically get scaled and positioned appropriately.

By: Mike Woodhouse

Mike Woodhouse — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 10:35:03 +0000

It’s just so typical of Microsoft that they should virtually hamstring themselves in an attempt to provide permanent backwards compatibility for, well, about everything, and then still fail to do so.

There’s a part of me that wishes they’d just announce from time to time that the new version of something is not guaranteed to be 100% compatible with files saved from older versions. Maybe on a less-than-strategic product (Publisher?) at first. Then we (and more importantly MS) could see how much the purchasing universe actually cares. And maybe, just maybe, we’d move forward a little faster.

In the meantime, as you rightly point out, all these shenanigans are a continuing guarantee of income to the Excel professional…