Excel 2003 Data labels on chart have disappeared

[timmer69]

Hi all.

I have a problem with an excel chart that was written in office 2000, but is now used in office 2003.

The chart displays several sets of data relating to project milestones in an x-y scatter graph, with the x-axis indicating date, and the y-axis indicating the milestone. An additional series is included which is used to display labels containing the name of each milestone down the outside of the y-axis.

Now we come to the actual problem: in excel 2000, the milestone name labels are clearly visible, but in excel 2003, using the same file, they aren't: the are still on the graph, because you can click on them and format them, but you can only actually see the text they contain if you go to edit it.

Any Ideas please?!?

 

[byundt]

Perchance, do you have a wide screen monitor? Excel 2003 charts have difficulty displaying Y-axis labels if you use a monitor which has wider than 4:3 screen resolution (e.g. 1024x768 is OK, but not 1280x768).

Microsoft recommends changing your screen resolution as a workaround. I have found that textboxes can be used instead of axis labels--and they don't have any difficulty displaying or printing.

Brad

 

[timmer69]

Changing the screen resolution doesn't seem to make a difference. I was hoping for a fix that was quicker and easier than that, but it looks like I may have no choice.

Thanks for the advice.

 

[tf1]

Check that the background colour/transparency for the data labels is correctly set in Excel 2003.

Regards: tf1

 

[timmer69]

Yes, i have tried to set the background/colour of both the labels and the chart, and the font.

 

[timmer69]

The Mystery is solved!

It turns out that the labels were no longer being displayed because they were plotted on the same (primary) X axis as the other data, although the value of each point was the label text itself, meaning that it was below the minimum value for the X axis.

In office 2000, this meant that the labels were displayed to the left of the y-axis on the graph > perfect for giving a name to each value. In office 2003, this means that tehy are placed to the left of the y-axis, but were made invisible. plotting the data for the labels on a secondary axis solves the problem.

Thanks for the advice anyway guys.