Troubleshoot charts

A passive alert indicates that your chart contains an error. The alert appears as an exclamation point at the bottom left corner of the chart. Passive alerts appear in error situations such as when a texture file cannot be found or when a database connection fails. Click the exclamation icon to see more information about the error. If necessary, contact the designer of the Web page or your system administrator.

In Microsoft Excel, you can specify that a chart plot visible cells only. When this setting is enabled, the chart does not reflect data in hidden rows or columns within the data range that you use to create the chart. When you publish a chart, however, all data is reflected in the chart.

If you do not want the chart to reflect hidden data, you should unhide the rows and columns in the worksheet and move the data out of the data range you are using to create the chart before you publish the chart. See Excel Help for information about moving data in a worksheet. To change your chart after publishing, you can unhide and delete the rows or columns that have the data you do not want shown in the spreadsheet that is published with the chart. For information about deleting rows or columns, see Spreadsheet Component Help.

To publish a chart to the Web from Microsoft Excel, you must include both x and y values in an xy (scatter) chart, and you must include x, y, and bubble size values in a bubble chart. Excel supplies default values if x values are not included in your data selection. These values appear in the chart in Excel, but they are not retained when you publish the chart as a Web page.

If you didn't include all necessary values in your chart, type them in Excel into a column that's adjacent to the chart's original data, re-create the chart, and then republish it.

You can view and interact with charts for the Web in Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.01 SP2 and later.

Install the Microsoft Office Web Components To view and work with charts for the Web, you must have the Office Web Components installed. You can do this by installing Microsoft Office 2003 or, if your company has a Microsoft Office 2003 site license, you can download the components from an intranet.

Check the browser version To interact with a chart, you also need Microsoft Internet Explorer version 5.01 SP2 or later. It's recommended that you have Internet Explorer 5.01 SP2 or later to take full advantage of the interactive capabilities of the chart and its source data.

If you published a chart from Microsoft Excel, you might not have chosen to publish the chart with interactive functionality. If you publish without interactive functionality, the chart displayed in the browser is static and is not connected to data.

To publish an interactive chart, open the original workbook in Excel, select the chart, and then click Save as Web Page on the File menu. In the Save As dialog box, click Selection: Chart and select the Add interactivity check box.

Which programs are available from the Edit button in the Web browser depends on how the page was published.

If clicking the Edit button in your Web browser opens an Office program that you do not want to use, close the program, start the Office program you want to use, and open the Web page from there.

By default, the Commands and Options dialog box is not displayed for charts in run-time mode (that is, in a browser or displayed on a form in a custom application). For that reason, Help topics dealing with the Commands and Options dialog box are not included in run-time Help. See the designer of the Web page or application you are viewing for more information about working with this dialog box.