Area chart - data point and value problem

[AdminAmber]

Hello-

Background Info:
I chart production data for new products as they come online. I have a
separate worksheet for each product with daily production information. On a
separate worksheet we will call "summary worksheet" I have columns for each
new product (B through Z), and 365 rows with the date on each (A2:A366). If
Product1 came online January 11, 2007, I went to cell B2 on the "summary
worksheet" and linked it's contents to the production data for that day in
the worksheet for Product1. The formula was copied down to the end of the
year to grab the production data as it is updated on the product's individual
worksheet. No problemo.

Problem:
My 2D Stacked Area chart on the summary worksheet. Visually the graph looks
correct - as new products come online a new stacked column is added.
However, when I hover my mouse over the data points, the wrong information is
shown. I'll hover over data that should be for November, and not only is the
value not showing up, but it claims my point is for January or April or some
other seemingly random and incorrect month. I want to see Series Product1,
Point November 14, Value 100.

Question 1: Do area charts not provide value information when you hover?
On a line graph that I have on the individual product worksheet I can get the
product name, date, and production value when I hover.

Question 2: I researched the forum and tried an XY plot already, but this
just puts all 25 of my products in lines on top of each other and you can't
see when each product starts and how it contributes to the "whole."

Hotmail is blocked from my websites so I can't be notified of responses, but
I can still access this forum and I'll check back very often.

Any help is appreciated.

-Amber

 

[Jon Peltier]

Amber -

1. Area charts do not have very accurate chart-tips. I just did a little
test, with categories a through e. The chart-tip showed "Point a" until I
was midway between b and c.

2. Line charts have a stacked option, which may help.

- Jon

 

[AdminAmber]

Hey Jon! Thanks for helping!

I changed my chart type to stacked line. Is there any way to fill-in the
plot area so that the plotted data looks more like the area chart?

I'm trying to change the option for empty cells to "gaps" from "zero" and
the option is grayed out. Any idea why?

-Amber

 

[AdminAmber]

Nevermind! I went through about 15 more chart types until I realized the
stacked column was virtually visually the same thing as the area graph and my
values are now correct!

 

[Wayne]

Jon,

You state that "Area charts do not have very accurate chart-tips." They did
with Excel 2003. I have applied Office 2007 SP1 to see if this corrected the
error and it did not. Management is used to the area charts and the "hover"
feature. Converting the area charts to bar charts really looks bad - very
choppy. And there are too many series (16) to make a stacked line chart
usable. It becomes too difficult to find a series and see the trend.

Thanks for your time!

 

[Jon Peltier]

Then and now, I tested in 2003, and stand by my assessment. I went so far as
to capture chart events from an area chart and discovered that the mouseover
event does not recognize a point on an area chart while it does on other
charts (line, column, etc.).

A workaround you may try is to make your area chart, then add a line series
to align with each area series. The mouse will then capture the screen tip
for the line series points.

- Jon