Comments on: Magazine Quality Chart (Economist)

By: Jon Peltier

Jon Peltier — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 12:03:05 +0000

Jay - Read my tutorial about Using Excel with Other Office Applications. It is heavily concentrated on moving charts using the image vector format of Picture (which relates to Windows Metafile). The only problem is that in Office 2007, the charts are not copied as faithfully as in 2003.

By: Jay

Jay — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 07:26:22 +0000

Is there a way to make a macro or a one-click solution to paste-special a copied chart from excel into powerpoint as an enhanced Metafile? I would love to make this frequent task of mine a one-click action. I use Office 2007

By: Jon Peltier

Jon Peltier — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 20:22:25 +0000

Chrisham -

What version of Excel? Are you really selecting the chart area? Do you see “Chart Area” in the “Selected Chart Element” dropdown? It’s either on the Chart toolbar or Name Box in “Classic” Excel, or on the second and third Chart Tools ribbon tabs.

By: chrisham

chrisham — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 10:20:30 +0000

Jon, this may be trivial, but I am unable to select the formula bar when I select the Chart or the plot areas to add the Text Box in what would be the easiest way you recommend.

By: Jon Peltier

Jon Peltier — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 16:51:32 +0000

Steve -

I have no knowledge of what graphics package The Economist uses for its charts, but I am positive they don’t use Excel. I would assume they use Illustrator. This article shows how to make such a chart using Excel.

By: Steven Matthews

Steven Matthews — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 16:41:54 +0000

Are you sure The Economist uses Excel to make its charts? I am a graphic production artist and have worked at a number of financial institutions and publications, and we’ve always used Adobe Illustrator for final output. These institutions have unwavering standards regarding their output — font size/leading, placement, colors, etc.

By: Jon Peltier

Jon Peltier — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 11:06:34 +0000

Chrisham – To identify a font, I think you have to already have a good idea what it is. At least narrow it down by style.

By: chrisham

chrisham — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 07:00:31 +0000

Wow! Thanks Jon…. Your tutorials are a fantastic read.
The chart looks great and from another tutorial you have pointed me to great utility in selecting colors : http://colorbrewer2.org/
The right selection of Color and font make a great impact in making a good dashboard or reports as you would well know.
My question is, are anyways to recognize a particular font I may see on a chart (normally something I would view online through some JPG or GIF files).

By: Jon Peltier

Jon Peltier — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 11:26:35 +0000

Paul -

There are two ways to handle this. One is to keep the series with lines as is, without the marker on the last point, and a one-point XY series that always indexes to the last X and Y values in the data, and this series has the custom marker. The other is to sort the data in reverse order, so the data is listed newest to oldest in the worksheet. This way the first point of the series is always the latest, and if you add the marker to this point, it will always be on the last point.

By: Paul

Paul — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 01:08:51 +0000

I see how you’ve created the custom data markers, I have a line graph i have one custom marker on the end, when i add data to it, the line extends but the marker doesnt move to the new end point, can you advise if this is possible?