Drawing a line on a chart

[ExcelGeek75]

Help! I need to draw a line on a chart that is horizontal - - in old Excel,
the SHIFT key could be used to "snap to" the horizontal, but in Excel 2007,
it does not work and it is driving me crazy!

 

[Bernard Liengme]

Not sure what you mean by 'snap to'
Holding SHIFT while drawing the line will keep it horizontal but I cannot
recall in Excel2003 that you were able to fix a line that you had already
drawn - my PC will XL2003 is out of commission today so I cannot confirm
this.

I have just experimented with XL2007 : holding SHIFT does indeed keep the
line horizontal
Try again on a new worksheet and let us know the result
best wishes

 

[BoBF]

I am not able to draw a line on a XL2007 chart in the 1st place.
I have the chart as a sheet. When I am view that chart sheet, the
illustrations menu (which contains shapes) is grayed out. What am I missing?

 

[Bernard Liengme]

Open the Insert tab
Click the chart
On the Insert tab; click Shapes, select one item for the Lines gallery
Drag the mouse to draw line
This is how I always do it.
best wishes

 

[AdamV]

Holding Shift does snap to 45 degree angles, including horizontal.

To draw on a chart sheet, select the chart as well as switching to the
sheet.

BUT drawing over you chart this way is pretty clunky - what if your
chart is updated, your data changes and the axis rescales, all those
sorts of forseeable events?
Why not plot an extra series with two points to draw the line for you?
Make it a line chart, move it to the secondary axis if necessary and
even 'strecth' it to the sides of the plot area (by adding then
formatting the secondary horizontal axis to show vertical axes at the
tick marks instead of between them)

Hope this helps
Adam