Hiding parts of a curve on a chart

  • Thread starter Thread starter Michael Preminger
  • Start date Start date
M

Michael Preminger

Hello!

I've done this before, but it's a long time ago, and I forgot how I
accomplished that...

I would like to show a curve, but only some pieces of it.

I mean:
I would like to hide some pieces of the curve, pieces that correspond
to irrelevant intervalls on my x-axis

See for example the two curves here:
http://bibin.hio.no/~michaelp/example1.gif

Only three intervalls from a whole value-range are shown.

And again: I cant remember what on earth I did to accomplish it, and I
cannot repeat this for new curves. The entire curve, inclusive the
uninteresting intervalls is shown. Some help would be most appreciated.

Thanks

Michael
 
Michael -

You can apply different formats to individual points and lines in a series. Click once to select
the series, then again to select a point and the line connecting it to the previous point. Now
choose the Format Selected Data Point command on the Chart menu or the right-click menu.

You can even use 'None' for the format of a line segment to make it disappear in an XY Scatter
chart. In line charts in Excel 97 and 2000, this also works. In Excel XP, for some reason
Microsoft changed the behavior, so instead of making one line segment disappear, both segments
attaching to that point disappear, but a new line is drawn from the point before the select
point to the point after.

Instead of 'None' you could pick a line color that matches the background color.

- Jon
-------
Jon Peltier, Microsoft Excel MVP
Peltier Technical Services
Tutorials and Custom Solutions
http://PeltierTech.com/
_______
 
I wanted to see what you said about lines in XL2003. With a 5 point XY chart
I hid point 4 using format single point.Surprise, the legend changed from a
single y to five items - one for each x-value. The same occurred in a Line
chart. Same happened in XL2000. Very odd.
If the chart had two series, the legend was well behaved. But then who needs
a legend with only one series?
 
Hi Bernard -

This is appropriate and expected behavior when you choose the "Vary Color by Point"
option. And it only happens if there is a single series, because with two series it
becomes complicated. I recently discovered that manually formatting one point
differently than the rest also induces the legend with each point. I hadn't noticed
the change to the legend when I tried it out yesterday, but this is what you have
described, and it is what I just observed in a follow up trial. Although the legend
changes, the Vary Color by Point box doesn't check itself. So this is a bit of an
inconsistency.

But like you said, who needs a legend with one series? I usually have several series
in my charts, and whenever possible I use other techniques than the legend to
identify the data.

- Jon
-------
Jon Peltier, Microsoft Excel MVP
Peltier Technical Services
Tutorials and Custom Solutions
http://PeltierTech.com/
_______
 
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