Office 2007 Charts: Access vs. Excel

boag2000,

    I'm new enough to this to suspect that I just don't know how to make my charts look right, but seeing that there's a significant difference in the chart wizard between Excel 2007 and Access 2007, I'm not sure what to think just yet.  From what I've been reading, working on charts in Access isn't much fun.  I'll try to be more explicit.

    Using Excel 2007, I'm able to create a pie chart using the built-in wizard with all manners of 3D features (shading & gradients, transparency, rotation, perspective) - which is what I expected to get by upgrading from 2003.  However, when I use the wizard in Access 2007, I pretty much get the same options as I got using 2003 (pretty much basic rotation, and standard RGB single color per slice kind of stuff.  Vintage MS Graph 8.).  This pretty much sucks for me, as I was looking for a quick solution to my completely cosmetic issues.

     At first glance, I feel like a chump for being so clueless, but given the inconsistency between the 2007 wizards, part of me wants my money back if this really is an Access oversight.  I've attached a snapshot of my Access vs. Excel pie charts which are the direct result of about 3 minutes of each wizard.   I'm sure there are workarounds to my dilemma (run the query from Excel and generate per-record graphs & form letters, write a VBA masterpiece with OLE magic, etc)... but honestly, I don't have a lot of experience in making MS products bend over backwards for me.

     Since I'm the one asking for help from square one, I welcome any starting points and/or barbed insults.  Thanks!


        lowflier
     

boag2000- thanks for the response and validating my fears.  Since the direct route of using the charts in Access 07 isn't going to work, I'm going to have to explore another option.  I'll post another question with my next plan of attack.  Thanks!

Just for funm see these links

Ther are quite a few third party graphing utilities out there.

http://www.smartdraw.com/specials/chart.htm?id=229140&gclid=CKrvity9wJUCFQQWGgodggJXPg

http://www.dundas.com/products/Chart/RS/index.aspx
http://www.corda.com/chart-and-graph.php?gclid=CNLD4I6-wJUCFQqFGgodTRIIQg

JeffCoachman

The charting/graphing utilities in Access 2007 are horrible - they are a pain to work with and they don't look anywhere nearly as nice as those available in Excel 2007.

If you're going to be doing this alot I'd recommend creating an Excel template with all the charting already formatted and exporting your Access data into that template. That way the charts are done as soon as the Excel workbook opens.

irritablebadger,

"The charting/graphing utilities in Access 2007 are horrible - they are a pain to work with and they don't look anywhere nearly as nice as those available in Excel 2007."
Only if you do not know how to manage them.
;-)
True, they are a bit "ornery", but once you get the hang of them (and you don't need anything exotic) they are fairly straightforward.

As you know, Excel and Access are two separate programs, meant for two different purposes.
Access charts are an attempt to "summarize" large amonts of data, hence the difficulty most people have with them.

"they don't look anywhere nearly as nice as those available in Excel 2007."
We had already established this.
;-)

 "I'd recommend creating an Excel template with all the charting already formatted and exporting your Access data into that template."
Then please post this as a tutorial on how this can be accomplished, and submitt it here as an "article".
;-)

Thanks

JeffCoachman