Creating charts - first row&column treated as normal data

I have organized the data in a table that has in the first column the years,
in the first row the periods and in the other cells the respective sales.
Problem: when I select the entire table and use the Wizard to create a bar
cart, the first column is treated as the others columns and plotted in the
chart as an additional series.
I know I can correct this manually in the step 2 of the wizard, but I rather
prefer a system that automatically recognizes that the first column and row
are not data, but labels.
I have Excel 2003. With old versions I believe it was enough giving a
different formatting to first row and column.
Thanks
Enzo

Enzo:
Check if you left the left upper cell of your selected table empty. Excel
should then treat the first column and first row as labels I think.
HTH
Henk

"Enzo" wrote:

> I have organized the data in a table that has in the first column the years,
> in the first row the periods and in the other cells the respective sales.
> Problem: when I select the entire table and use the Wizard to create a bar
> cart, the first column is treated as the others columns and plotted in the
> chart as an additional series.
> I know I can correct this manually in the step 2 of the wizard, but I rather
> prefer a system that automatically recognizes that the first column and row
> are not data, but labels.
> I have Excel 2003. With old versions I believe it was enough giving a
> different formatting to first row and column.
> Thanks
> Enzo

On Wed, 5 Jul 2006, in microsoft.public.excel.charting,
Enzo <[email protected]> said:

>I have organized the data in a table that has in the first column the years,
>in the first row the periods and in the other cells the respective sales.
>Problem: when I select the entire table and use the Wizard to create a bar
>cart, the first column is treated as the others columns and plotted in the
>chart as an additional series.

>I know I can correct this manually in the step 2 of the wizard, but I rather
>prefer a system that automatically recognizes that the first column and row
>are not data, but labels.

I used to get this a lot, until I realised I was using the upper left
cell to label the first column. Excel doesn't know how to interpret
that. Since I startd making sure to keep the upper left cell blank when
creating a chart using Chart Wizard, it has stopped misbehaving.

Have you got content in the cell at the top of the first column?

--
Del Cotter
NB Personal replies to this post will send email to [email protected],
which goes to a spam folder-- please send your email to del3 instead.

You are right. After removing the text in that cell, the wizard works.
Thanks!
Enzo

"Del Cotter" wrote:

> On Wed, 5 Jul 2006, in microsoft.public.excel.charting,
> Enzo <[email protected]> said:
>
> >I have organized the data in a table that has in the first column the years,
> >in the first row the periods and in the other cells the respective sales.
> >Problem: when I select the entire table and use the Wizard to create a bar
> >cart, the first column is treated as the others columns and plotted in the
> >chart as an additional series.
>
> >I know I can correct this manually in the step 2 of the wizard, but I rather
> >prefer a system that automatically recognizes that the first column and row
> >are not data, but labels.
>
> I used to get this a lot, until I realised I was using the upper left
> cell to label the first column. Excel doesn't know how to interpret
> that. Since I startd making sure to keep the upper left cell blank when
> creating a chart using Chart Wizard, it has stopped misbehaving.
>
> Have you got content in the cell at the top of the first column?
>
> --
> Del Cotter
> NB Personal replies to this post will send email to [email protected],
> which goes to a spam folder-- please send your email to del3 instead.
>

On Thu, 6 Jul 2006, in microsoft.public.excel.charting,
Enzo <[email protected]> said:

>You are right. After removing the text in that cell, the wizard works.
>Thanks!

You're welcome. Henk had the same thought.

Also, the more cells you leave blank in the upper left, the more rows
and columns the wizard will put in the category axis and the legend.

a b c
d e f
g h i
k l m 1 2 3
n o p 4 5 6
q r s 7 8 9

--
Del Cotter
NB Personal replies to this post will send email to [email protected],
which goes to a spam folder-- please send your email to del3 instead.