Excel 2003 xy chart - problem plotting more than 330 points

[ehmcneill]

I'm trying to use the xy plot to plot around 12,000 points in one
series. My understanding is that Excel should cope quite happily with
up to 36,000 in one series. However, I can't get it to chart more than
330 points without it stopping working.

Specifically, I have one set of points (age) ranging from 50 to 100 and
a second set of points which is a percentage ranging from 0% to 100%.

When I try to plot more than 330 points, the chart essentially becomes
a line chart but without a line joining the points. That is, the
points cease to be ordered according to age, but are simply plotted
against 1 to 12,000, the first point plotted against 1 on the x axis
(although the age is 73) and the second point at the right place on the
y axis; the same is done all the way through the the 12,000th point
which is plotted against 12,000 on the x axis (despite an age of 70).

Naturally this is highly dissatisfying as I'm hoping to identify a
relationship between the two variables!

Can anyone help?

ehmcneill

[Jon Peltier]

I suspect you have encountered a nonnumeric value in the range of X values.
This causes Excel to treat all X values as category labels, and essentially
converts the XY chart to a line chart.

To find the bad point, remove horizontal alignment formatting, so text is
left justified and numbers right justified. To fix it, make sure the cell
has a numerical number format, then if it's just one or two points, re-enter
the value and press Enter. If it's several points, make sure there are no
nonnumeric characters, then copy a blank cell, select the text cells, and
use Paste Special from the Edit menu, and choose the Value, Operation - Add
options. This adds zero (the blank cell's value), coercing the text cells to
be numeric.

The limit in an XY chart series is 30,000 points, by the way. How happily it
works depends on the speed of your processor.

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


"ehmcneill" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> I'm trying to use the xy plot to plot around 12,000 points in one
> series. My understanding is that Excel should cope quite happily with
> up to 36,000 in one series. However, I can't get it to chart more than
> 330 points without it stopping working.
>
> Specifically, I have one set of points (age) ranging from 50 to 100 and
> a second set of points which is a percentage ranging from 0% to 100%.
>
> When I try to plot more than 330 points, the chart essentially becomes
> a line chart but without a line joining the points. That is, the
> points cease to be ordered according to age, but are simply plotted
> against 1 to 12,000, the first point plotted against 1 on the x axis
> (although the age is 73) and the second point at the right place on the
> y axis; the same is done all the way through the the 12,000th point
> which is plotted against 12,000 on the x axis (despite an age of 70).
>
> Naturally this is highly dissatisfying as I'm hoping to identify a
> relationship between the two variables!
>
> Can anyone help?
>
> ehmcneill
>