Chart Labels

Posted by Chris Nicholas on August 27, 2001 9:40 AM

Hello there, ok ive got a problem and my head hurts from the wall ive been banging it against. plz plz plz help :)

Ive got 3 columns - A B C
A contains Country Names
B contains Population Figures
C contains GDP Figues

I need a scatter chart of population (X Axis) against GDP (Y Axis) with a point for each country, I need each point to be different and the legend to show each point shape with the corresponding country name next to it.

Ive done the chart thats the easy bit but I just cant figure out how to get Excel 97 have a different shape for each point and list these in the legend. Im sure its something so basic but i just cant figure out how to do it automatically, the only way I know is to go through each series and change each point to what i need, I have 80 charts, with 31 countries...

Any help would be much appreciated, feel free to call me stupid just please help!

Chris

Posted by Damon Ostrander on August 28, 2001 10:05 AM

Hi Chris,

To get the countries to show up in the legend, each row must be a separate series. This means that you must plot the data by rows rather than the default columns when you set up the chart.

Actually, it appears to me that the hard part will be getting the chart to assign each country's data range properly so that the point appears at the correct population and GDP value. When I tried it Excel made the wrong assumptions about how to assign these ranges. I believe you will have to write a VBA macro to do these assignments because of the number of charts and countries you have--it would be far too tedious otherwise.

I hope this helps.

Damon