how to set bar width in a bar chart

[madelca100]

Hi All,

I'm using Crystal 10 to create a bar chart with monthly data for the year. (So I never have more than 12 months worth.)

Everything was fine last year (I started in June). I just produced my first chart for 2005. Yikes! I got one bar, for January, that is 7-inches wide.

How can I set things up so that all bars will have the same width?

thanks,
mike

 

[TheBlondOne]

The bars will auto size depending on how many bars you have in your chart, so for example you've ran your report for January, so that will give you 1 bar which is fairly big, but the more information that the chart shows, the thinner the bars will become.

HTH

 

[TheBlondOne]

I'll just add this aswell, if you select the bar so that it is highlighted and then right click and go to chart options > general, you can alter the gap width which in turn will change the size of the bar, but it will also have an effect on the other bars when more data is introduced to the chart, might be an idea to have 2 charts and suppress one if the month = January.

HTH

 

[madelca100]

Thanks SteveHill.
What I'm trying to do is turn off the 'auto sizing'.
I'd also like to avoid having to intervene every month to change the gap (or anything else for that matter). This report/chart is scheduled monthly in Crystal Enterprise.

Still hoping someone out there has discovered a method of doing what I need.

mike

 

[TheBlondOne]

Ok, I think that the only other thing that you can try is to right click on the chart and go to Chart Expert. You should be put automatically in the Type Tab. You will see a check box with Automatically set chart options to the side of it. If you un-check that box you will see another tab appear called Options. In here you can set the bar width, you can choose whether to have them small, medium, large etc..

HTH

 

[madelca100]

thanks SteveHill.

Looks better with 'small' bar width, but one month is still very wide.

I also tried 'minimum' but that looks very odd with 12 months of data because the bars are so skinny.

I wish they allowed me to choose my own width. (Perhaps in a future release they will.)

thanks again,
mike