Adding multiple series to charts

  • Thread starter Thread starter Steven K. Smith
  • Start date Start date
S

Steven K. Smith

My, the sign-on process was annoying! I had to click "allow this" 12 times
after I started counting, just so I could ask this question.

In Excel 2007, how do I add multiple series of data to a scatter chart? It
appears to only allow you to add one series at a time.

I have a worksheet with data in columns. If I add some columns of data to
the and want them to appear on the chart, the only way I've found to do this
is to right click, choose "select data", "add" and then individually enter
the X and Y ranges for each series, one at a time.

It has no problem creating a chart with multiple series at one time, why is
this different? This was much easier in Excel 2003.

Sooooo annoying, but until I can dump this job my workplace makes me use
Excel.
 
1. click somewhere on your chart, but not on a specific object - the data
source of your chart will get highlighted
2. hover your mouse on the corner of the frame that delimitates the data range
3. adjust the size of the data range

Now this only works, if the new columns and the previous ones build a range.
 
Copy the range of data you want to add, select the chart, and use Paste
Special to add the data as new series.

- Jon
 
Most of the charts I make, and the specific one where the question came up,
are in a seperate sheet, not embeded in a worksheet. Also, the usual case
seem to be that "The chart range is too complex to display..." on my charts.
When I tried this on another spreadsheet with an embeded chart, it didn't
highlight the data ranges.
 
Sorry, I thought at first it didn't work correctly, but then I realized I was
testing this on a "line" chart rather than an XY chart.

Your suggestion works well for XY, but if you try it on a line chart, it
simply puts the selected data at the beginning of the chart, regardless of
where the data you'd selected occured in the original chart.

Thanks for the help.
 
In a line chart, all series use the category values defined for the first
series. If you want two series to use different X values, you need to
provide all X values, with gaps where either series has no corresponding Y
values. The data looks like this, select the entire range, including blanks,
and make the chart.

X Y1 Y2
1 2
2 3
3 4
4 5
5 3
6 4
7 5
8 6

If the two series overlap, arrange like so, and go to Tools menu > Options >
Chart Tab, and choose Interpolate for how Excel should deal with empty
cells.

X Y1 Y2
1 2
2 3
3 3
4 4
5 4
6 5
7 5
8 6

- Jon
 
How do I add lots of series? I need to plot data for up to 1000 series in a
single chart, with each series representing a single customer.

I'm basically trying to graph buying behavior of customers, where I map lots
of customer purchases on a chart to see what trends pop out.

So my data might look like this:

Customer Days Widgets
A 1 1000
A 300 3000
B 200 200
B 1000 10000

So customer A bought 1000 widgets on Day 1 and 3000 widgets on Day 300.
Customer B bought 200 widgets on Day 200, and so on.

The challenge is that I don't know how many customers I will be graphing,
and each customer may buy on a different day.
 
An Excel chart is limited to 255 series. You need to rethink what you want
to chart. Does each customer need its own series? Are you interested in
widgets per day, cumulative widgets, or something else?

- Jon
 
You raise some valid points. I can probably get each chart down to 255
stages by breaking out customers by geographic region, customer size, etc.

If I can do this, then what is the most effective way to graph out all the
customer series? I was looking on your Web site for an example but couldn't
find anything that jumped out at me. Could I do this with a Series Formula?
 
It depends on what you want to show. As I asked...

Another thing you need is legibility, but your posts don't indicate that
you're too concerned with that.

What you need to think about includes:

* do I understand my client?
- do I understand the data?
- do I understand what they need to learn from the chart?
- do I know how they currently display the data?
* what are my plotted values?
* how do I segment the data?
- what are the categories? dates? parts? customer? something else?
- how do I define my series? customer? part number? classifications of
parts?

- Jon
-------
Jon Peltier, Microsoft Excel MVP
Tutorials and Custom Solutions
Peltier Technical Services, Inc. - http://PeltierTech.com
_______
 
I want to track the widget buying history of each customer. I already have
sales data on how many widgets have been purchased by a distinct customer on
a specific date. There are other helpful fields such as geographic region,
customer size, etc. I've already been able to massage the data a bit and use
pivot tables so I can get statistics such as total widgets per region per
quarter, widgets per quarter purchased by new vs. existing customers, etc.

I'm trying to prove or disprove a hypothesis about the data; namely, are
most widget purchases made simultaneously with the initial sale of the first
widget or afterward? I was hoping that by graphing the widget buying history
of a number of customers, this would become more apparent. This is why I
planned to make each customer into its own series so I could graph out the
customer's buying history over time.

I plan on segmenting the customers by geographic region and customer size.
If I still have more than 255 customers per segment then I was simply going
to make each segment smaller by tweaking the customer size categories.

I'm doing this analysis mostly for myself so I can draw some conclusions
about our customers and their buying patterns, so you are correct in saying
that legibility isn't the foremost concern.

Hopefully my questions make more sense! I'm still fairly new to Excel
charting but I'm doing my best to learn as much as I can to get the job done.
 
I was thinking about using an xy scatter plot because I wanted to plot time
on the x axis and number of widgets purchased on the y axis. So the x axis
is definitely treated as a value rather than a category.

I actually don't care too much about differentiating among the >255
customers; I'm mainly looking for general trends in buying behavior. I was
thinking that if I graph a large number of customers and juxtapose their
buying behavior together, certain patterns will emerge.

Sparklines is an interesting concept. The biggest issue I see with them is
that they don't allow me to map many simultaneously together, which is what
I'm primarily interested in. The aggregate is more important than the
individual customer.
 
One of your buying patterns was when customers bought widgets relative to
their first widget purchase. If you just plot by date, you'll have a big
mess. But try subtracting initial purchase data from purchase date, so you
have number of days since first purchase. This will give you a better X
variable. For your Y variable, you may leave quantity as is, or you may
divide quantity by initial purchase quantity, or you may transform it in
another way. And don't treat this as either-or. Make several charts, one for
each variation you can think of. And keep trying other variations as they
pop into your head.

- Jon
 
Thanks - I should have clarified that the x axis wouldn't show date but would
instead show days since the first purchase. I plan on calculating this as a
separate columnn and then using it to graph with. As you say, plotting by
date will result in a mess.

Is it possible to automate the process of generating all of this data
automatically? I don't think Excel will automatically create the charts I'm
looking for, so I would have to manually add each new customer series one by
one and then tweak the series formula. This is not viable from a sheer time
perspective.

The only way that comes to mind is write some sort of script to go through
the data row by row. As soon as the script detects a change in the customer
field, it will create a new series out of the rows it has previously
processed.

If this doesn't work then the only other option is to use a more flexible
graphing tool such as gnuplot or something in combination with scripts to
process and prepare the data for graphing. I would have much more
flexibility in processing and graphing the data but I was hoping that Excel
would be powerful enough to do this. It can certainly do a lot - sometimes I
think it can read my mind. :)
 
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