Why is Autofit Labeling greyed out? - excel

I Have created a bar chart in a 2007 .xls file, but the data labels cannot be resized. When you go to the "format Data Labels" and then click on alignment, the Autofit and Internal Margin option is grayed out. Anyone know why?

Short version: It is greyed out for chart text, because it the option doesn’t apply.
Long version:
This is because on a chart, chart text do need to use margins, rather you can you can just move the text., and set its X and Y position. For example take the Chart Title, if you want more space to the left, just click and drag the title to the right. If you want the chart title to be bigger you just set a larger font, you have complete control over the title, as well as all other text on that chart, axis titles, legends, data labels, etc.
Internal margins are meant to be used when you don’t have complete control take for example text in a shape. If you insert a shape in your workbook, and add text to it, you cannot just pick the text up and move it to the right if you want more space on the left, so you can set the margin.

Here's a trick that worked for me:
My problem was: I added more text to the axis title and it was too long for it's original shape so some text went into second line.
My solution: I type the complete text somewhere else, copy the text, double click on the axis title and delete the original text -- the cursor would still be there -- now insert the copied text. Done! They are all in one line!

Partial solution to resize label to a single line: Data labels in a chart will often wrap themselves, when you dont want them to. They would often seem better in a vertical single line above the graph item. Reset them to one single line by editing the text in the label, deleting the Excel imposed return, and replace it with a space. The line, and label box, will resize to fit a single line. However because you have "manually interfered with the lable, it will no longer update for changing graph data. You would have to double click each lable then reset it. Most annoying.

A way around it is to make the chart area big. The data label boxes will resize to fit the words in one line. Then make the chart small (not the chart area).

Manually insert a textbox into the bar chart and type in the label that way. It's annoying and labor-intensive, but it works.

Related

How to make a vertical slider?

I need a vertical slider similar the standard slider. Is there a way to modify the existing one or do I need to make a new one?
The standard slider would work for me. I just need it to work vertically.
Perhaps I should better clarify my issue with the standard slider.
Yes, I can drag the size of the slider and it will be vertical. The problem is that when you select the value of the slider to show the text gets buried in the low side of the slider when you slide it down all the way. It essentially gets cut off and only shows the top half of the slider value character. I find no way to correct this by moving the shown text up a little so it all shows. I see no way to change text vertical or offset position in the properties setting.
The text settings only allow you to change the text format to right, center and left justify. There is no setting that can move the text up to prevent it from being cut off when the slider is all the way to the lower or down position.
The value text shows ok on the top of the slider. The problem is on the bottom side when you set the slider to be vertical.
It looks like the the show value setting does not place the value on the top layer of the slider and it gets hidden behind something else in the slider object.
LC9, Windows 10
I think I'm understanding your question. If you just resize the horizontal slider control so that the width is narrower than the height, the orientation of the slider control will automatically change to vertical.
Apparently it is a bug in this version of LC. At least in Win which is where I am testing.
Putting the scrollbar vertically cuts the value when it reaches the bottom.
But I found a solution so that it does not cut. Play around with the properties of the font. Such as size and family. In my case it worked fine by lowering the font size by one pixel.
Default: Segoe UI font, size 12
I just set the size to 11 and it doesn't cut anymore.
For what it is worth, I do not see this issue on a Mac. A vertical slider works as advertised. Font size makes no difference.
Are you saying that in the horizontal mode, you do not see this, but when changed to vertical, you do?
Try creating a scrollbar and a text field.
Set the scrollbar's showValue property to false and copy the following script to your scrollbar. Note that your field must be called "scroll value".
on scrollbarDrag pNewPosition
local tLoc
lock screen
# The Current Loc of Field
put the loc of field "scroll value" into tLoc
# New Position of scrollbar
put pNewPosition into field "scroll value"
# New Loc of Field
put the mouseV into the item 2 of tLoc
set the loc of field "scroll value" to tLoc
set the left of field "scroll value" to the right of me
unlock screen
end scrollbarDrag

Excel: Baloon Chart: Automated lines between data points with text

If I have multiple data points on a bubble graph. Is there any way to get a line drawn between data-point-pairs, with a text box?
- This will probably need some coding skill.
Here is a representation of what I am looking for, however the lines between data-point-pairs, with a text box was manually drawn.
Please help!
Line:
Right-click one of the data-points and "add trend-line" (linear). Right-click to format the trend-line and select arrows in begin/end arrow type
Text:
There a various ways of doing this, a simple solution: Go to Chart Tools->Format->Insert shape and type "= Cell with text+value to be displayed" in the formula bar when editing the text-box. People can join in as there may be a more sleek way of creating data-labels for a trend line.
Save it:
Right-click the chart and "Save as template" for future use.

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)...

How can I move the field name to the bottom of graph in Tableau?

I'm using Tableau 9.0.2 to generate graphs and I can't for the life of me figure out how to move (ideally drag, right?) the field name for my x-axis from the top to the bottom of the graph, by the units, where it should be.
I'm attaching a picture because it's probably the easiest way to make clear what I'm trying to do, given this is a question of positioning:
This Tableau graph has the field name "Iterations" at the top of the graph, not the bottom, where it should be. While this might not seem like a huge concern, it means that these graphs are not immediately exportable.
How can I move the label "Iterations" to the bottom of the graph, next to its axis?
The answer currently offered below allows for manual image modification within Tableau, which is unsatisfactory. It seems bizarre to me that the default, unchangeable behavior of Tableau goes against standard practice in graphing (labels next to labelled).
If the goal is just to get the headers and the axis label in the same place, one alternative would be to move the headers to the top of the chart (as opposed to moving the axis label to the bottom).
Go to Analysis/Table Layout/Advanced... and uncheck the option "Show innermost level at bottom of view when there is a vertical axis". This will move your Iterations headers to the top of the chart, and now everything will be in the same place.
If that's not an acceptable alternative for you, here's the only (kind of unfortunate) solution I can think of:
Place your worksheet in a dashboard.
Right click the axis label and select Hide Field Labels for Columns.
Create a text box with your desired axis label (in this case "Iterations") and place it below the chart. Your headers and your DIY, home-brewed, hacktastic axis label will now both be at the bottom.
Hide the columns axis label then enable / edit the caption within the bottom of the dashboard. Then center the value of the caption. Should look better.

Change format of all data labels of a single series at once

I have an Excel 2010 chart, with several series. I have added data labels to one of the series. I want to change the font size of all labels of that series at once. Can it be done?
Note that if the contents of data labels are combinations of the three standard options in the Format Data Labels dialog ("Series Name", "X Value", or "Y Value"), I simply change the font size in the ribbon and it works.
But if data labels contain cell references (i.e., formulas), I could only change the font size of one label at a time.
I guess a macro would help. I tried something a while ago, and faced a sequence of problems (do not remember exactly which).
Anyone knows of a shorter/alternative solution?
It appears I found the cause.
Referring to the figure, whenever any of the cells referred to by the data labels is empty (e.g., deleting the contents of D4), I cannot change the font size.
If I reinstate D4, I can change the font size again. This is reproducible for the simple worksheet/chart of the figure.
According to this,
Workaround 1: Fill up all empty cells referred to. Change the format of labels. Remove added contents.
Workaround 2: Change to a dummy range for the data labels, which has no empty cells. Change the format of labels. Switch back to your intended range.
This might require The XY Chart Labeler, an excellent add-in by Rob Bovey.
This does not always work (there are cases where one cannot change font even with all non-empty cells), so there should be another possible cause for the problem (besides the one reported).
A workaround:
For the workbook, Save As... (you can even use the same workbook name). The problem goes away.
But if you close the file and open it again, the problem reappears.
Most of the times it works.
A workaround (found prior to #1):
A very poor solution, but which possibly saves quite a few keystrokes/mouse clicks in many cases. Select the whole chart, and change the font size in the ribbon. It will change all text. Then recover the font size of all other text but the data labels.
It won't work in charts with more than one series with such data labels, if you want them to have different sizes!
A quick way to solve this is to:
Go to the chart and left mouse click on the 'data series' you want to edit.
Click anywhere in formula bar above. Don't change anything.
Click the 'tick icon' just to the left of the formula bar.
Go straight back to the same data series and right mouse click, and choose add data labels
This has worked in Excel 2016. Purely by luck I worked this out saving a great deal of time and frustration.

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