Comments on: Why I don’t like Excel 2007 charts

By: Jon Peltier

Jon Peltier — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 12:06:54 +0000

James -

Have you installed the service packs? I think 2007 is up to SP3 already, or at least SP2, which has cured a lot of bugs.

FWIW, 2010 is much more robust.

By: James

James — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 10:59:42 +0000

Hi Jon, great of you to offer this advice! Having problems in 2007 charts with half of the values on my y-axis appering on screen and in print preview but not in the printed version (eg: axis 0-1400 might print 0-400 with rest blank, or having recopied and adjusted plot area size etc 0-600). Alos having a similar problem with legend text going missing, the legend key colour boxes are there but some of the text is missing (again adjusting the text box size and fiddling with the plot area inside the chart window can bring 1 extra series title into play but nothing I do brings in all the titles). I have created all my charts directly in 2007 (I was saving old 2003 files into 2007 format but I read this might be causing the problem so I recreated them in 2007. Also none of them are flagging up as in compatability mode) and it still happens. I think it may be a similar problem to those others have reported
Rene Tanazas – Friday, January 16, 2009, 12:06 pm
Nicky – Wednesday, January 25, 2012, 11:52 am

By: Craig

Craig — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 23:25:22 +0000

Hi Werner – I totally agree with you. I had to abandon a long-running undergrad practical class on preparing graphs using MS Office because of Office 2007/2010. The quality is unacceptable for scientific publication. For my personal use I retain copies of Excel and Powerpoint from Office 2003 so I can continue to produce figures for science journals without resorting to SigmaPlot or DeltaGraph. It has crossed my mind a few times to test Open Office but I haven’t gone there yet.

Craig.

By: Werner Strasser

Werner Strasser — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 01:12:33 +0000

I just was talked into using the “latest and greatest” Excel 2007. What a pile of excrement. The graphs are totally unacceptable for technical use. They are no more than lipstick on a pig. If I want pictures than I might as well use Paint.

Microsoft did it again! I can go back to Lotus 1-2-3 graphs and look at there crispness and clarity. Microsoft was able to dilute that Lotus quality and now has sunk to an even lower level. Those “fantastic”, new and improved graphs by Excel 2007 are washed out pictures that strain your eyes but might be just good enough for plotting meaningless data to be used by marketing and advertising gurus.
2007 is a totally unacceptaple gimmick meant for people who have no need for technical graphs but try to show that they can plot some data points.

By: Nicki

Nicki — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 16:52:15 +0000

Help, please.
I have created a line chart in Excel 2007. I have selected the data series. I have the axis formated so that the data would fit within it. I have formatted the lines(if they would show up). I have a legend. However, nothing shows up in my chart – no lines, nothing.

By: Don Shillady

Don Shillady — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 17:20:16 +0000

Thanks for your assistance with a simple but annoying problem. I have learned that when in doubt to place the cursor over the item of interest and right-click to find hidden options. So far I have found. “Excel 2007 Quiksteps” by John Cronan to be only slightly helpful compared to other useless texts on Excel 2007. Excel-2007 seems to be dedicated to drawing fancy charts for business applications with little thought to what is my bread and butter in drawing black line graphs of mathematical functions, although I do enjoy the R^2 curve fitting and the dotted/dashed line options. So far I have not found a “how-to” book dedicated to the fancy versions of drawing functions as can be applied to publications.