Making Sure that Data Accompanies a Chart

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated August 1, 2025)
This tip applies to Excel 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and 2021


1

In Jose's school he asks students to submit Excel charts. Many times, they submit completed charts that, when Jose opens them, are blank. He gets a message that the link to the chart's data has been broken. Jose wonders what he should include in his instructions to the students that will ensure he receives a chart that is tied to the data they have used and that will display as it should.

There are multiple answers that can be provided to this question. Largely, the correct answer will depend on what you want to receive from the student. For instance, if you only want to see the chart, then you could instruct the students to capture a picture of the chart and paste that picture into a new workbook or even into a Word document. (You would, of course, need to provide instructions on how to do the capturing and pasting.)

If, however, you need to see the data on which the chart is based, then the easiest approach is to tell the students to make sure the chart is embedded in the worksheet that contains the data on which it is based. (Charts can be created either as an embedded object or as an entire chart sheet. You want them to do the former, not the latter.) Then the students can send you the single worksheet that contains both the data and the chart. If you, at that point, need to see the chart larger, you can easily convert it to an entire chart sheet.

If you want the students to submit the chart on its own sheet, then your instructions should clearly point out that whatever they submit must contain two sheets—the chart sheet and the worksheet on which the chart is based.

Of course, if the chart is based on data in a worksheet that is in a different workbook (perhaps a workbook that you provided to the student), then they will need to know how to copy the worksheet from that external workbook to the workbook in which they created the chart.

It may be a good idea to suggest to the student that once he or she has created the workbook they want to submit, they should get out of Excel and restart the program to open the submission workbook. If they get errors, then they can correct them before actually submitting the workbook to you.

ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (13799) applies to Microsoft Excel 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and 2021.

Author Bio

Allen Wyatt

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. ...

MORE FROM ALLEN

Checking for Words and Phrases

You may want to determine if a document contains a certain set of words or phrases. There are a couple of ways you can ...

Discover More

Understanding WIZ Files

A file that uses the WIZ extension will open just fine in Word. What are these files, however, and how do you create them?

Discover More

Calculating the First Business Day of the Month

Want to know which day of the month is the first business day? There are a few ways you can check to make sure the date ...

Discover More

Dive Deep into Macros! Make Excel do things you thought were impossible, discover techniques you won't find anywhere else, and create powerful automated reports. Bill Jelen and Tracy Syrstad help you instantly visualize information to make it actionable. You’ll find step-by-step instructions, real-world case studies, and 50 workbooks packed with examples and solutions. Check out Microsoft Excel 2019 VBA and Macros today!

More ExcelTips (ribbon)

Unselecting a Chart Item

When formatting a chart, you select elements and then change the properties of those elements until everything looks just ...

Discover More

Locking Graphic Annotations to Chart Data Points

Sometimes it is helpful to add annotations to your charts in order to explain the data displayed. This tip provides ...

Discover More

Ignoring Empty Cells in a Chart

If the data you are using as the source for a chart includes some cells that are empty, you may want to exclude those ...

Discover More
Subscribe

FREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in ExcelTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."

View most recent newsletter.

Comments

If you would like to add an image to your comment (not an avatar, but an image to help in making the point of your comment), include the characters [{fig}] (all 7 characters, in the sequence shown) in your comment text. You’ll be prompted to upload your image when you submit the comment. Maximum image size is 6Mpixels. Images larger than 600px wide or 1000px tall will be reduced. Up to three images may be included in a comment. All images are subject to review. Commenting privileges may be curtailed if inappropriate images are posted.

What is 5 + 3?

2025-08-01 07:58:24

jamies

Annoying experience in the 2016 (365) version of Excel

I have a workbook that gets a set of data posted into the "data" worksheet,
and then the user gets a dashboard effect to see charts generated from that data
with the set of charts in each worksheet showing different aspects of the data, and being trimmed (a NOW semi-automated process that
removes charts from the sheet if the data aggregation does not get data for the particular activity that was to be charted.

So - say 10 charts in each chart sheet, but data indicates that chart 4,5, 9 & 10 are not appropriate for that user's activities -
automated process to delete the charts ( by deleting the worksheet rows that the charts are set within.
Now - the bit that has been de-automated since 2010 was no longer "usable"

To avoid users confusion with unused blocks of zero value data - where the aggregating process could not get data for an activity - and has consequently deleted the chart -

the data rows that were referenced by the no longer existing charts are deleted -
And Excel will ..
sometimes when saving the file, warn about missing data rows that WERE referenced in the charts that have been deleted,
and other times save the file with no warning, just a failure report when the saved file is opened .


The solution ...
wait ( on an I7 system with 8GB RAM )
wait at least 10 minutes for Excel to finish doing the tidy-up of removing the deleted charting object's links to the data before trying the save !

And .. make that a SaveAs to create a copy of the file with the charts removed, having created a saved version with just the aggregated data and the unwanted chart objects still to be removed.

Well,
that, or use the old 2010 excel.exe version to run the fully automated scripts !

Also - it is worth the effort to change the zoom on a sheet with any chart -
that gets Excel to go through a process seemingly recreating the chart - but that time using all the settings you specified, rather than just some of them, and the rest using the default chart layout and formatting settings -

So zoom the sheet view up 10%, see the charts then get shown with your wanted presentation, zoom back down 10% and see the chart(s) with the new settings retained !


This Site

Got a version of Excel that uses the ribbon interface (Excel 2007 or later)? This site is for you! If you use an earlier version of Excel, visit our ExcelTips site focusing on the menu interface.

Newest Tips
Subscribe

FREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in ExcelTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."

(Your e-mail address is not shared with anyone, ever.)

View the most recent newsletter.