Troubleshoot charts

If you cannot locate the command or option you want in the Commands and Options dialog box, it could be because you don't have the necessary item selected in the chart. To make sure you have the correct item selected, click the General tab in the Commands and Options dialog box, and then in the Select box, click the chart item you want to work with. Options for that chart item will then appear in the Commands and Options dialog box.

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.

Chart items (such as the legend, plot area, data labels, and titles) can't be moved or resized with the mouse. However, chart items such as the legend or some axes can be moved by using the Position or Placement settings on the appropriate tabs in the Commands and Options dialog box. Other settings in the Commands and Options dialog box allow you to rotate or flip the plot area of a chart, pull out slices in pie or doughnut charts, resize the font used in labels, titles, and the legend, and resize the data markers in some types of charts. Other chart items are resized automatically when the size of the chart changes.

You can add titles to a chart and to the axes in a chart. You can also add data labels to data markers. You can't add free-floating text to the chart. If necessary, add text to the Web page that contains the chart.

There might not be enough room in the chart to display all of the axis labels. If some of the category names aren't visible along the horizontal axis of the chart, try the following:

• Enlarge the chart. See Help in your design program to learn how to select and resize the chart control.
• Use a smaller font size for text on the horizontal (x) axis.
• Shorten the category names in the source data.

If your category (x) axis displays numbers such as 1, 2, 3, 4 instead of the values you want, you might have created a line chart instead of an xy (scatter) chart. With the chart active in the design program, click the chart, click Chart Type on the toolbar, click XY (Scatter) in the list on the Type tab, and then click the sub-type you want to use from the display on the right. If you want lines to connect the data markers, click one of the subtypes that has lines.

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.

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

In a design program You can view and modify published charts in Microsoft Office FrontPage 2003, Microsoft Office Access 2003, and Microsoft Visual Basic. Your chart might be represented by a blank box in other design programs.

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

Check the browser version To interact with a chart, users also need Microsoft Internet Explorer version 5.01 SP2 or later. It's recommended that users have Internet Explorer 5.01 SP2 or later to take full advantage of the interactive capabilities of the chart and its source data. To learn more about the level of interactivity with the chart's source data in different browser versions, see the Help for the 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 when you click the Edit button in the Web browser depends on how the page was published.

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