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I don't know how to do this...
- Thread starter grassaj
- Start date
some chart tips - the wizard is pretty raggedy. don't know your experience level with charts so forgive me if i give what you might think is lower-level advice:
1) in order to see what you are really working with, instead of the North-South-East-West stuff, run the query/table the chart is based on, copy the resulting dataset, and paste it into the 'template' data over what is there. now you can select each feature and format it and see exactly how it's gonna look.
2) you can choose each item and menu CHART TYPE to make it acolumn or a line or whatever you want. choose FORMAT SELECTED ITEM for color, line thickness, etc.
3) format considerations:
a) properties of chart-make size mode STRETCH and re-size it out as big as you want it.
b) for line charts, i suggest NOT using the kind of line that has little dots or diamonds along it unless you really need to for some reason, and it looks really good. sometimes the diamonds/whatever are so smashed together or for other reasons look horrible.
c) in CHART OPTIONS you can show the DATA TABLE. This lays the data out in a spreadsheet-type format underneath the chart. you can then double-click on the data table to format it because default is BOLDwith a huge font.
d) you can select each item (double-click) like the axis, the data labels, the axis labels--and format them however you want.
e) make lines (the lines based on the data i mean, not grid lines, etc) pretty fat if possible. easier to see. also consider color-blindness (i'm serious) when choosing your colors. too many similar colors that are next to each other won't work well.
f) make the background white instead of the grey default. looks way better on viewfoils and printouts.
g) make any gridlines light grey or dashed. makes the rest of the stuff stand out better.
h) move the legend manually and format the font size so it's nicer than the default.
as you can see, there's a lot of tweeking if you want something nice. I suspect a lot of people just go with the defaults, but after 2 solid yearsgenerating some pretty complex charts in Access, I have the routine down pretty good
)
let us know how far you get after this...
1) in order to see what you are really working with, instead of the North-South-East-West stuff, run the query/table the chart is based on, copy the resulting dataset, and paste it into the 'template' data over what is there. now you can select each feature and format it and see exactly how it's gonna look.
2) you can choose each item and menu CHART TYPE to make it acolumn or a line or whatever you want. choose FORMAT SELECTED ITEM for color, line thickness, etc.
3) format considerations:
a) properties of chart-make size mode STRETCH and re-size it out as big as you want it.
b) for line charts, i suggest NOT using the kind of line that has little dots or diamonds along it unless you really need to for some reason, and it looks really good. sometimes the diamonds/whatever are so smashed together or for other reasons look horrible.
c) in CHART OPTIONS you can show the DATA TABLE. This lays the data out in a spreadsheet-type format underneath the chart. you can then double-click on the data table to format it because default is BOLDwith a huge font.
d) you can select each item (double-click) like the axis, the data labels, the axis labels--and format them however you want.
e) make lines (the lines based on the data i mean, not grid lines, etc) pretty fat if possible. easier to see. also consider color-blindness (i'm serious) when choosing your colors. too many similar colors that are next to each other won't work well.
f) make the background white instead of the grey default. looks way better on viewfoils and printouts.
g) make any gridlines light grey or dashed. makes the rest of the stuff stand out better.
h) move the legend manually and format the font size so it's nicer than the default.
as you can see, there's a lot of tweeking if you want something nice. I suspect a lot of people just go with the defaults, but after 2 solid yearsgenerating some pretty complex charts in Access, I have the routine down pretty good
)let us know how far you get after this...
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