Suppose that you’re putting together a line chart that will, for whatever reason, have several plateaus.

Now, you’d like to add labels to indicate the value…

Not quite what you had been hoping for? Now, I very well could be wrong, but I couldn’t find a quick way of indicating to Excel which labels you’d like to show, e.g., every third label, etc. Don’t worry, this is a quick and easy work around for this.

Suppose that your data sheet is setup as follows:

All that you need to do, is add a new row for the labels themselves. In cell B3, type the following formula:

=IF(B2>0,IF(B2=A2,"",B2))

What this is doing is looking at B2 and ignoring it if it is equal to 0. The reason that we do this is so that we don’t end up with a row of 0’s printred across the x-axis of our chart. Of course, if your chart extends into the negative numbers, go ahead and change the value following > to be equal to the lower limit of your y-axis. Now, if it finds that the value in B2 is greater than 0 (or your lower limit) it checks it against the value in the cell to it’s left. If they are the same, if prints a blank space, if they differ, it prints the value of B2.

The next step is to add another data series to your chart. Go back to your chart, right click on the chart area, and choose “Select Data” or “Source Data”, depending on the version of Excel that you’re using. Click “Add”, and identify your new row as the source of the series data. Click OK to exit this window.

Now, right click on the new line that has been plotted (it should look like a series of spikes whos apex’s touch the first data point on each plateau. In the right click menu, choose Format Data Series. Set your line and markers to none, then turn on your data labels for values. You should end up with something like this:

If you’d like to try and center the labels as I have here, assuming that the majority of your plateaus are the same width, you have to adjust the formula to look back one or two more cells, instead of just checking for a match to the immediate left.

Excel Solutions Excel, Line charts

I don’t recall exactly how I came across the site, but I was reading a very nice article at The Blog Herald which has inspired me to my own disclaimer. You can take a look here.

Web Site Stuff Disclaimer, Web Development, Web Site Stuff

I just stumbled across this site and thought that it was worth mentioning.

Let me Google that for You is a great little site that generates a link for you based on a Google search. It’s perfect for those times when, on a forum, in an email, in blog comments, etc, someone has a very easily-answered-by-a-google-search question but, rather than searching for it themselves, they post the question for everyone else.

To really appreciate it, you need to see it in action…

Suppose that you’re in a forum and this question is posted:

Does anyone know what the screen resolution is for the iPhone?

Well, instead of doing the search yourself and coming back to the forum to post what would be a helpful, considerate, and well worded reply, you could simply jump over to Let me Google that for You and post this as your reply:

…here

I love this tool and see it as a perfect compliment to my already overly sarcastic replies

These guys are in no way affiliated with Google, so I’m sure that if this thing catches on they will be making a killing through AdSense search income.

Have fun!

Web Site Stuff Fun Stuff

The site had been running an old version of WordPress, so I figured it was time to upgrade. While I was at it I decided to change the theme. Not that I had any issues with the previous theme, in fact I quite liked it, however it seemed to be slightly less than compatible with this latest WordPress release.

The new theme is by a designer who goes by the handle mg12 and runs the site NeoEase (not english). I’m using another one of his themes, albeit very heavily modified, on a site that I have just recently launched and I downloaded this one without realizing that it was by the same designer.

I would highly recommend either one of the two these that he has published, they have some very nice little extras built in to them and, overall, are extremely clean.

Web Site Stuff web design, Web Development, wordpress