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Excel Charting Tips:
Excel 2003 vs. 2007
      
Chart tip #1: Excel
2007 vs. Excel 2003
Chart tip
#2: Pie Chart tips
Chart tip #3: When to
use Cone, Radar, and Pyramid Charts
Chart tip #4: Bar Chart Tips
Chart tip #5: Times Series Charts
Chart tip #6: Scatterplots
Chart tip #7: Boxplots
Chart tip #8: Where to go for more help
Chart tip #9: Printing and copying charts
Chart tip #10: Downloading different data formats
Chart Tip #1: Excel 2007 vs.
Excel 2003
(as of 12.31.07, Using Office 2007 Service Pack 1)
Advantages of Excel 2007:
- Thick lines on time series
charts (2003 severely limits the line size).
- Chart Printing: 2007 does not
re-shape charts and fonts when printed, obviating the confusing print
options with 2003. For publishing purposes, printing the charts to
adobe files works extremely well.
- Log scaling: 2007 allows for
much better control of the logged axis scale:
- Better text control: 2007
does not cutoff text in text boxes and permits much larger font sizes on
rotated bar charts.
Disadvantages of Excel 2007:
- Generally, the program is
slower, especially with large file sizes
- The 2007 macro recorder does
not work on charting objects. It is necessary to record macros with
2003 to use them in 2007.
- There is no compatibility
program that allows Mac users with Office 2003 to view 2007 files.
- The 2007 menu-ribbon is
horrendous.
- Some Excel 2007
charting functions do not display when the files are opened in 2003 with the
2007 compatibility pack.
- The function for copying the
image of a chart (say, to paste the image into Word or Powerpoint) is hidden
under the Paste button:
Home | Paste | As picture | Copy as picture
This, however, is only slightly more complicated than in 2003, where
the command is requires holding down the shift key:
Shift-Edit | Copy as picture
Disappointments of Excel 2007
(What could have been)
- No new chart types, such as
boxplots
- No chart labeling options,
especially for scatterplots.
- Still no control over the
size of axes or title textboxes.
- When there are more than a few textboxes and
drawing elements on a chart, some of them may disappear when printing or
copying the chart. Suggestion: use data lines on dummy data series
with just a few data points; use the value of the data point to place the
label. [this, noted before service pack 1]
Note: If you
are not using the newest version of Excel, to access the
MS 2007 Excel files for the figures (not the tables) in the
above chapters, download the
2003\2007 Office Compatibility pack
08/03/2008
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