How to do Pareto Chart?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Jim Moore
  • Start date Start date
J

Jim Moore

I am trying to do a Pareto chart but the charts come out in alphabetical
order of the labels. For example if I have a table or query that looks like
this:
C 20
B 5
A 2
D 1
The chart will come out in the order A, B, C, D or D, C, . . and not in the
desired order. Can you give me a clue where to start? I am using Access
2000 and have tried the Chart Wizard in forms and pivot chart.

Jim Moore
 
How??? That is what I am trying to do, but I can't find a way to display
the first field and order on the third!

Thanks for your help.

Jim Moore
 
Jim Moore said:
I am trying to do a Pareto chart but the charts come out in alphabetical
order of the labels. For example if I have a table or query that looks like
this:
C 20
B 5
A 2
D 1
The chart will come out in the order A, B, C, D or D, C, . . and not in the
desired order. Can you give me a clue where to start? I am using Access
2000 and have tried the Chart Wizard in forms and pivot chart.
Click to expand...

Tables in most modern database systems are inherently unordered. Just "buckets
of data". While you might see what looks like an order when opening the tables
directly that cannot be relied on when querying the data. So first off, when
you want a particular order then you must use a query with an explicit Order By
clause.

Now in your case the next question becomes "how is your desired order defined?".
If C, B, A, D only represents the order the records were entered and there is no
other field you can sort on to return the records in that order then you have a
design problem. "Order of Entry" is essentially a meaningless term in these
systems. You either need a field that reliably increments a numeric value as
records are entered, or you need to record the Date and Time that each record is
entered. Then you can use that field to sort on.
 
The table is ordered on the numeric field, decending. The resulting table
has the "Order By" property set to the name of the numeric field. In my
case the Table is named "ParetoAtRiskObservationsByArea" and the numeric
field is named "At Risk", the Order By property is
"ParetoAtRiskObservationsByArea.[At Risk] DESC". I do a query, the table
comes out in the desired order, but the chart orders by the descriptors
field. If I add a field that numbers the desired display order, how can I
use the descriptors field for the axis labels and the order field for the
order???

Jim Moore
 
Jim Moore said:
The table is ordered on the numeric field, decending. The resulting table
has the "Order By" property set to the name of the numeric field. In my
case the Table is named "ParetoAtRiskObservationsByArea" and the numeric
field is named "At Risk", the Order By property is
"ParetoAtRiskObservationsByArea.[At Risk] DESC". I do a query, the table
comes out in the desired order, but the chart orders by the descriptors
field. If I add a field that numbers the desired display order, how can I
use the descriptors field for the axis labels and the order field for the
order???
Click to expand...

An sort applied to the table is irrelevant. The fact that a query based on
the table without an explicit OrderBy clause returns them in the desired
order is irrelevant. You must use a query based on the table and
*explicitly* set an order in that query.
 
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