dashed line and marker frequency

[Young-Hwan Choi]

I posted this kind of topic about 6 months ago, and I didn't get an answer.
I just wonder whether there are some new add-ins that make dashed line looks
dashed line and customize the frequency of markers in a chart for large
amount of data. I have seven curves in a chart and I need to make them look
different when I see on black-white hard copy. While I understand that it is
possible to use VBA or dummy columns for this work, the problem I have is my
data are focused on the initial part. And, if I draw a chart with 50th or
100 th points, I lose the important part. (It seems to me that MS doesn't
want engineers use Excel as least for graphing purpose.)

any suggestion?

 

[Jon Peltier]

For the marker frequency, use two series. One plots the line connecting
all the points, but no markers. The other plots every Nth point.

The problem with dashed lines is that the sequence of line-gap-line is
started again at each data point. Someone posted a technique a while ago
which drew a shape consisting of a jagged line connecting the XY points.
When this line is formatted with dashes, each dash extends around the
corner past another point, so it looks like a dashed line in its
entirety. You could hunt in the google groups archive for it:

http://www.google.com/advanced_group_search

The exploded 3D pie charts are fine for the marketing types using Excel,
but as an engineer, you sometimes have to make your own tools.
Fortunately, despite some limitations, Excel is also flexible enough to
allow all kind of custom effects, like the dashed line I cited above.

- Jon
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Jon Peltier, Microsoft Excel MVP
Peltier Technical Services
Tutorials and Custom Solutions
http://PeltierTech.com/
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