I'm not understading anything about charts in Access.

[CTOROCK]

I don't understand the Charts very well. Everytime I use the wizard(which is the only thing i use a wizard for), I don't understand what's happening. I go into design view and I see a datasheet with East, West, and North and 1st,2nd, and 3rd quarter fields. But the data I see on my chart is different. I can't change very much, and when I do, I don't know how i did it. How can I format the data to appear in "fixed" numbers with only 1 decimal place? how can I hide fields but display values? I know it's a super general chart question, but can someone help me understand things a little better?
Thanks. "The greatest risk, is not taking one."

 

[CVigil]

I don't have much time right now, but I can give you the quick beginnings of an answer/tip:

First, I'm working with Access 97, and using Microsoft Graph for the chart. What you describe sounds like what I saw when I started working with graphs a few weeks ago.

Nominally, the "East", "West", "North", etc., are all placeholders of a sort, just to let you specify how the real data should be handled. And it should be enough to allow you to indicate what to do to the series and titles and all that good stuff. And there are also *enough* of both rows and columns to display enough controls for me to adjust. Absolutely, yeah, right, Microsoft ;-) .

As soon as I needed to change data labels, I had to have data in Graph for every column in my column chart. (You see, I was working with column charts.)

What I found incredibly useful: In Access, get a datasheet view of the data that will be graphed (good sample data is fine). Select the grid's data by clicking on the upper-left square between column & row selectors, and copy it all to the clipboard. *Now* go to MS-Graph, view the datasheet (you'll have to look for the command or button to do it), and paster your new data in place of Microsoft's generic sample data. Now the graph you see while developing will look substantially more like your end-product!

And it's way less confusing to look at your own data, and to see data for everything you (want to) specify.

Like everyone who posts answers, I really hope I was a help, to you, and to others perusing your question in the years to come. -- C Vigil =)
(Before becoming a member, I also signed on several posts as
"JustPassingThru" and "QuickieBoy" -- as in "Giving Quick Answers&quot

 

[CTOROCK]

I see what you are saying a bit. I'll try your little paste thing to better see it. Now I just need to fool around with it.

Thanks CVigil.
"The greatest risk, is not taking one."