Ms. Compy Fix-It is Back! With an Excel 2007 Data Labels Workaround

Well hello there!  It’s certainly been a while.  I hope everyone’s been doing well and not having too many computer struggles.

I am happy to report that I have a workaround for that annoying (and completely inexplicable) Excel 2007 quirk of not allowing chart data label resizing.  I can’t even tell you how many times I’ve struggled with this, so I’m very excited to share my workaround with you, even if it’s not a complete fix.

(I’m working on making 3 charts fit in a very tiny space, so forgive the use and misuse of gridlines, titles, etc.. I’ve had to pare it down to barebones 🙂 )

See how ugly they are?!  Ugh!  Well read on to see how to force it to use that extra space around it, like the pretty last graph.

In order to describe it properly, I’ll have to define what I mean when I say certain things:
“Whole Chart area” – the area that includes the chart, its axes, the title, and the legend (see below)

“Inner Chart area” – the area that gets selected that includes the data and not much else (see below)

So, in my struggles with this, I’ve noticed a few things:

• Excel changes the data labels when you resize the Whole Chart area
• Excel doesn’t change the data labels when you resize the Inner Chart area
• Excel will not reliably change your data label size when you increase or decrease your font size (sometimes it will even act differently from one chart to the next!  I’m still trying to figure that part out…..)

So!  If you want to adjust your data labels – say they’re crazy-thin like mine above:

1. expand the Whole Chart area until your data label is as wide as you’d like
2. shrink the Inner Chart area until your chart is the size you’d like
3. select the Whole Chart area and ensure your background is “None” – as it’s now quite huge and will cover any other data you have beside it (if you wanted a nice border around your chart, you can always just draw a rectangle shape with no background and it’ll work almost as well)
4. move around your axis label and title, as they’ll no longer be centred
5. if you’d like the font size to be bigger/smaller, give it a try.  I found the data labels I adjusted in this way were able to increase/decrease font size after as well.  Who knows, maybe this frees them from their Excel-prison shackles!

Has this helped solve your problem?  Let me know in the comments!  🙂

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Slate Grays

my hands are dry and rough from working
my eyes are small and used to squinting
my stature average, verging on petite
I have thin skin and veiny feet
my complexion’s poor, my tone is pale
genes say my bones will be quite frail
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my opinions strong, my manner shy
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in private I keep emotions tame
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I have good friends who understand
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for when I love, I love whole-hearted

    

      

Copyright L.M. 2008.

Open Mic Night

a night of hills
rounding o’er the surprises
at the almost intangible
we crashed
but would you look now
the sky separated
no more lenses
and look how it shines

sparkled eyes sending
flashes of truth and water
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Finished: 6:03 a.m., Saturday, December 1st, 2007.