Microsoft KB Archive/277595

= Some data labels appear inconsistently in your charts when you open an Excel 2002 workbook in Excel 2000 =

Article ID: 277595

Article Last Modified on 1/29/2007

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APPLIES TO


 * Microsoft Excel 2002 Standard Edition
 * Microsoft Excel 2000 Standard Edition

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This article was previously published under Q277595





SYMPTOMS
When you use Microsoft Excel 2002 to create a workbook containing charts and data labels, and then you open the workbook in Microsoft Excel 2000, you find that some of the data labels appear inconsistently in your charts, while other data labels may not appear at all.

This can happen if different methods are used to format the charts. For example, two apparently identical charts may be formatted using the following two different methods:

Method 1

 * 1) Select the first chart.
 * 2) On the Chart menu, click Chart Options, and then click the Data Labels tab.
 * 3) Click to select Series name, Category name, and Value. Click OK.
 * 4) In the chart, double-click a series of data to open the Format Data Series dialog box.
 * 5) Click the Data Labels tab, and then click to clear Category name and Value. Click OK.

Method 2

 * 1) Select the second chart.
 * 2) Double-click the same series of data (that you selected in Method 1) to open the Format Data Series dialog box.
 * 3) Click the Data Labels tab, and then click to select Series name. Click OK.

You might expect these two methods to produce identical charts, because both contain a data series that should only be formatted using the Series name. However, if this workbook is created using Microsoft Excel 2002, and then opened using Microsoft Excel 2000, the data labels may appear differently. In this example, the first chart may appear with Value labels instead of Series name labels. The second chart may appear with no labels at all.

NOTE: These two methods assume that you are using two or more data series. If there is only one data series, both methods may result in charts where no labels appear.



CAUSE
In Excel 2002, you can now add Value, Series name, and Category name labels to your chart. Series name and Category name labels are not available in earlier versions of Excel. Although these new features are designed to be backward compatible, some features may not appear as expected when you view your chart by using an earlier version of Excel.



STATUS
Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in the Microsoft products that are listed at the beginning of this article.

Additional query words: XL2002

Keywords: kbbug kbpending KB277595

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