excel exporting to pdf; graph placement offset - excel

I have some trouble with a document when exporting it to pdf with the builtin pdf export function of excel (2010).
I've generated a graph on my worksheet, with some colored cells arround it. Visually it looks good (even if I zoom on it with the ctrl key + mouse wheel). But when exporting, the graph overlap the surrounding cells.
For example, on the image bellow, I take a screenshot of my graph in excel (at top) and in pdf (at bottom). The red part is my graph (I've colored the background of the graph object). The graph have a black border. And just on the top of the graph, I've colored the background of a cell in blue. Normally, the graph must not overlap the blue cell, because I've manually place it bellow (cut the graph, select the cell bellow the blue one, and past the graph to this emplacement).
But we can see that:
the black border overlap the blue cell (in excel and in pdf version; but it's not really my problem; I've understand that the border in excel object is at outside the object; and then overlapp surround objects/cells).
the graph (in red + the border) has not the same place in excel and in pdf, there is a big offset (it's not a resize problem, this offset is present and the left side too). The place of the graph is more on the left and more on the top in pdf version than it can be!
(I'm using this to automatically generate reports; and the result is not visually good)
Is there any way to overcome this problem?

Hmm, I can't replicate your problem, but I've had similar issues exporting Crystal Reports to PDF. Here's 2 suggestions, neither of which is perfect and I couldn't try them first (again, sorry I couldn't replicate the problem):
Add a white row with a very small height between the graph and the cell. It might even be visually more appealing than the 2 objects one on top of the other.
Make your graph's background transparent and hide the border. Maybe add some extra white space at the top of your graph. That way, they'll still overlap, but it won't be as obvious.

Related

Color the gaps between stacked columns in Excel/ThinkCell

Can I do that in Excel or PowerPoint, maybe with necessary add-ins like Think Cell? I wouldn't want to do that manually by using shapes or overlaying one type of chart over another.
An example of such chart from McKinsey research:
To create such a chart I would assume that the author either colored it manually (not so unlikely if the picture is a one-off, consultancies have lots of people for such tasks) or used the following trick: The picture you showed consists of two charts (leaving the pillars on the right hand side out of scope):
The bar chart with all the numbers and texts in front
And in the background an area chart without numbers and texts
While 1) will only have columns for 2012, 2013, ... 2017 it is necessary that 2) is more granular and contain y-values for the following x-values 2012-left, 2012-right, 2013-left, 2013-right and so on.
In the end there will be quite some fine-tuning required.
All the best.
Jens

Extra column inserted before other columns when exporting to excel

I know how tricky it is to align things in a way that allows a clean export to excel, however, on this one I am stumped and have never seen it before.
Anyone know why the excel rendering extension insists on inserting a column like in the attached image?
Things that I have tried.
Set the table's position to 0,0.
Removed all borders and padding.
Set the report margins to 0,0,0,0
NOTE : I am using the EXCELOPENXML rendering format as opposed to EXCEL in order to support *.xlxs.
Groupings:
First Column in the Designer:
The report was being rendered as a sub report and was placed in a rectangle and aligned right in the main report, however, the rectangle was one twip off from left align. Once I aligned the rectangle in the main report, the phantom column disappeared.

Excel - Changing design of bars in charts

In excel charts can we change design of bars from
to
Background: I have taken agile project plan excel template from https://www.smartsheet.com/agile-project-management-excel-templates, but I didnt like the bars without arrows and hence I want to change these bars to look something like bars in https://www.smartsheet.com/agile-project-management-excel-templates#agile-product-roadmap-template
Lead here is appreciated.
Half... Let me show and you decide :)
This arrow is not a chart object. It's a shape, a drawing:
However, we can use shape object in Excel charts.
Remove text (you'll see in the last picture why) and Copy the excel object (picture above).
Mark the chart series you want to replace (notice I marked all of them, small circles)
Then just paste :D!!
Notice one bar has a border line, just click on the bar -> "Fill & Line" -> "Border" -> "No Line" to hide the border line around your shape object.
You can do it individually with different colours. When the graph changes the size of your bars changes too (according to your data). It's a bit more "maintenance" but looks better. General rule, the better it looks, the more "special" it is (more manual involvement)...

Change color of data label placed, using the 'best fit' option, outside a pie chart - Excel 2010

I am working with a pie chart whose data labels are added using the best fit property. Most of those labels are placed by Excel inside the pie, but some of them are placed outside.
Because of some series colors are so strong, the data labels had to be defined as white. Of course, the labels placed outside the pie wont be visible if I don't manually change their color (to black, for instance)
What I am trying to do is to conditionally change the label's color according to where Excel placed it (white inside the pie, black outside it), as in the following image:
I have been searching for a solution, but it seems that nobody had a similar problem.
Does anyone know if Excel allows this or does someone know a trick to bypass it?
There is a way to do this in Excel.
When you click on the chart, and go to Layout under Chart Tools.
Once there, go to Data Labels.
When you click on that, it will display a drop-down menu. At the bottom of the menu, click on More Data Label Options.
It will pull up a new window. On the sidebar of the new window, click on Number.
Then, under Category click on Custom.
In the textbox shown under Format Code, type in [Black][<0.05]0%;[White][>=0.05]0%
Click Add.
It should format the numbers outside the pie chart in your example black, and the numbers inside the pie white. If you had different data, you could format it the same, but you would have to change the number in the brackets after the color to the number one higher than number outside of the pie. It would be like this: [Black][<(number one higher than number outside of the pie)]0%;[White][>=(number one higher than number outside of the pie)]0%
Screenshot of Pie Chart Formatting
Source:
http://chandoo.org/wp/2009/01/29/colors-in-excel-chart-labels-trick/

How to extract each color bar and copy them in a table?

I made a diagram to show unique columns with several colors in each, as shown in the picture.
I have hundreds of that to make and I have no idea about how to do that.
I would like to know if it's possible to extract each color bar separately and copy them under "Icons". I am not sure if the word "extract" is the correct term, but I would like to display a raw-image of that color bar.
Maybe a formula?
I am able to use Office Excel and Libreoffice Calc.
Thank you so much.
These are instructions to do this manually, but this would be an ideal project to apply VBA and automate these tasks.
The idea is to create each category of stacked bar as its own individual chart, which can then be exported or copied to an image file.
This is based on the "spark lines" concept, which is small, eye-catching graphics embedded within the text of a document, as opposed to large graphics. MS added some sparklines functionality in recent versions of Office apps, and although MS "spark lines" doesn't support stacked bar chart type, the same thing can still be accomplished with a little work.
Step 1: Select one row of the data and do Insert Chart, stacked bar.
Step 2: Select data and Switch Rows & Columns.
Step 3: Delete the gridlines, axes, chart border, etc., .
Step 4: Expand the Plot Area so that it covers the entire Chart Area, and format the data series to 0% gap width.
Step 5: Apply your colors to each point in the series.
Step 6: Resize the chart to fit on a cell.
Finally now that you have created some ChartObjects you can manipulate them. ChartObjects can be Exported as image files, or copy/paste-special as images, bmp, or enhanced metafiles, etc.

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