Bob -
Where to begin.... I'll start with some severely limiting changes to the
new dialogs, changes that greatly reduce one's productivity.
In the Format Axis dialog, Old Excel uses option buttons to show the
choices for tick marks and labels, so you can see them all before
selecting, and it takes one click to select. New Excel uses dropdowns,
so it takes one click to see the choices and another to select. We all
know what the choices are, but there aren't that many, so why hide them,
especially since the dialogs have so much blank space?
In the same dialog, in Old Excel if I want to change from an Auto scale
parameter to a Fixed one, I could just click on the number and edit it.
In New Excel I have to click on the Fixed option first, just to enable
the text box. In Old Excel if I click on Auto, the text box is
highlighted, so all I have to do is type the new value, but in New Excel
it's not even activated.
I can't add error bars from the Format Series dialog, I have to go to
the ribbon, and this adds two sets at once (X and Y), and I still have
to visit the dialog to format them and select values.
In Old Excel, I could double click an object (a series, an axis,
whatever), make many changes in the dialog, then when I leave the
dialog, I could Ctrl+Z to undo all changes, or select another object and
Ctrl+Y or F4 to apply all the changes to the selection. In New Excel,
double clicking no longer pops up the Format Object dialog, and if
you're lucky, Ctrl+Z and Ctrl+Y remember just the last single formatting
change you made; sometimes they don't even remember that little.
So far, no bugs, just poor UI design choices. The source data dialog is
among the most confusing in 2007. I'm working on a charting UI add-in to
alleviate some of these issues.
Bugs, there are a few. If you specify custom error bar values, the
syntax is:
Function ErrorBar(Direction As XlErrorBarDirection, Include As
XlErrorBarInclude, Type As XlErrorBarType, [Amount], [MinusValues])
In Old Excel (i.e., in tons of existing code, even based on the macro
recorder), [Amount] and [MinusValues] are truly optional (note the
brackets), so you need not specify them. In New Excel, these are listed
as optional, but functionally they are NOT optional, so existing code
falls over unless you insert "0" for the optional arguments.
(Also the macro recorder has lost much of its functionality in 2007,
especially involving shapes and charts. But that's a rant for another
day.)
I have a custom chart that has primary and secondary vertical axes. The
primary vertical axis has no labels or ticks, just the line, and I set
it to appear at zero. If the primary horizontal axis goes from negative
to positive, the axis is a nice indicator of zero, like a special
gridline. If the minimum is >= zero, the axis merely appears on top of
the secondary axis, and doesn't bother anyone. Except in 2007, it
doesn't appear on top of the other axis, but actually to the left of the
tick labels of the other axis. It took me an hour to figure out what the
vertical line was just inside the left edge of the chart area. This is
probably a feature, because it means coincident axes do not obscure each
other; but a feature that changes functionality also breaks previous
solutions.
Autosizing of textboxes doesn't work as it used to. I don't recall the
details, but one of my first Excel 2007 projects was designing a
workaround for a client.
There are more workarounds I've designed for clients and for myself, but
it's still early, and they are not coming to mind. I still got in a
pretty good rant, though, didn't I?
- Jon
-------
Jon Peltier, Microsoft Excel MVP
Tutorials and Custom Solutions
Peltier Technical Services, Inc. -
http://PeltierTech.com
_______
Jon, could you expand on what you have found? I have a page at my site
I am updating and would like to list some of those problems.
Bob Flanagan
I have found dozens of little stupid things like this that don't work
the way they used to. Not exactly bugs, I guess, but not exactly
working right. I think they were rushed into releasing Excel 12 with a
beta-quality charting system. I'm hoping they have a chance to fix it
in Excel 14.
- Jon
-------
Jon Peltier, Microsoft Excel MVP
Tutorials and Custom Solutions
Peltier Technical Services, Inc. -
http://PeltierTech.com
_______
disapointing... thx. Brings in a number of problems if worksheet is
locked... etc
:
The chart needs to be selected, as Jon stated.
But for me the tooltip appears without the actual series being
selected.
Cheers
Andy
John wrote:
I have both those options checked. Strange... I actually have to
select the
series and then hover... which I don't want to have to do
:
Hi,
Check the options,
Show chart element names on hover
Show data point values on hover
Office button > Excel Options > Advanced > Display section.
Cheers
Andy
John wrote:
In 2003 I used to be able to hover over a data point on a chart
and it would
give me the value... in 2007 it seems I am not able to do that...
is that
correct? how can I see the data point value on my chart without
double
clicking on it... want to just hover over it
