Microsoft Graph 5 (Worksheet)

Microsoft Graph 5 is an older, but still quite useful graphing utility. One of its prime advantages is that it can be activated in place from within the Microsoft Access environment, giving you full customization capabilities from the Microsoft Graph 5 menus that (temporarily) overlay the Microsoft Access menus. Among other things, this means that you can change individual values within the graph, without affecting the original data in your Access tables. (This is handy when running various "what-if" scenarios.)

To initiate in-place editing, double-click the graph. (Double-clicking will activate only Microsoft Graph 5 images, not the other supported graph styles.) To exit Microsoft Graph 5 and return to Microsoft Access, click on any area under the control of Access, such as a Worksheet grid or SQL panel. When using the stand-alone graph response style, you can click the footer controls. Another fail-safe way of exiting Microsoft Access Graph is to press the Escape key.

Microsoft Graph 5 is a full-featured graph designer, and comes complete with its own documentation. This Help file will only discuss the features that are peculiar to the way it inter-operates with Access ELF.

When designing a graph, there are three aspects. The first is to decide which columns are to be graphed, and which associated fields will be used to label them. This aspect precedes the use of Microsoft Graph (or any of the available graph styles). It is covered in detail under the Chart topic.

The second aspect involves selecting, based on the values of these data points or labels, which parts will be incorporated into the graph, and in what order. Possible choices here are to retain only the 5 largest values of the graphed value, or to sort numerically by value, or alphabetically by label. Other choices might be to exclude any value equal to zero, or include only values that contain an "e" in their label. This part of the design process is handled by the graph-specific controls at the lower right of the Worksheet. This is discussed in the Scale Font and succeeding topics.

Finally, the formatting decisions such as size and placement of labels and legends, fonts, and choice of graph type (pie, bar, doughnut, etc.) can be made by using the in-place Microsoft Graph 5 button-bar and menus. Consult the Graph 5 documentation for help with these topics.

Note that the default graph generated by Access ELF when using the Graph 5 style uses a transparent placeholder for the Title. To add a title to these graphs, it's not enough to simply use Chart / Chart Options / Titles and enter your text instead of the placeholder AUTHOR. You'll also need to set the foreground color of the Title. When you change the text of the Title, it is automatically selected, so you'll have less trouble locating it this way. Otherwise you'll need to "feel around" near the top center of the graph, clicking until it becomes outlined. Once Title is selected, click Format / Font and change the Color entry from White to another color. You'll also want to increase its size from the minute 2pt. used for the placeholder.

While you're there, click over to the Alignment tab. Microsoft Graph 5 supports a cool function that lets you angle text up or down, making for effective graph accents.

As mentioned above, it's also possible to use Graph 5 to change values in the graph without affecting the database contents. To do this, use the window labelled Access ELF Query Worksheet - Datasheet. Click View / Datasheet if it doesn't already appear. The values in this grid determine the size of graph bars (or generosity of pie slice, etc). Of course. modifying them will result in graphs that do not accuratetly reflect the accompanying grid, but this may be appropriate in certain situations. This cannot be done with the other graphing tools supported by Access ELF.

Microsoft Graph 5 offers a number of other options that are not possible with any of the other tools, including Microsoft's later offering. For example, it not only provides 3D pie charts, but these charts can be rotated or angled to any degree. To reach these controls, double-click to activate editing, then select Chart / 3D View.