We have received a chart for chart busters that required some fixing. I thought, this will be a fun exercise for you. So here it goes,
…column chart that shows daily, weekly or monthly data depending on the user’s choice. In daily the columns are displayed properly, but in weekly & monthly mode the columns are a fraction of the width they should be – why, and how can this be avoided? Bonus points if you can describe how to use an INDIRECT formula on the x-axis labels which is another problem I ran into whilst creating this mockup!
You can download the workbook from here.
Here is how it is looking:
Thanks Gordon for asking this question.
Featured Answers:
There were several people who answered this correctly. I am featuring two answers for this problem.
By Jeff Weir:
One way to fix this is to select the ‘axis options/axis type/text axis’ option in the axis dialogue box (it’s current setting is “Automatically select based on data”.
Then it would be good if you set the ‘interval between tick marks as one, as well as the ‘interval between labels’ as 1 also.
Unfortunately then you run into the problem that your dates are now too wide for the space allowed for them on the graph. Easiest way to do that is to firstly make the graph a little wider, and secondly have an intermediate formula that formats your dates so they have a character return between the month and year, like this:
1 Jan
2009
instead of this:
1 Jan 2009
You can accomplish that with a formula along the lines of this:
=DAY(B6)&CHOOSE(MONTH(B6),” Jan”, ” Feb”, ” Mar”, ” Apr”, ” May”, ” Jun”, ” Jul”, ” Aug”, ” Sep”,” Oct”,” Nov”,” Dec”)&CHAR(10)&YEAR(B6)
Also, the y axis could do with a custom number format. No point of displaying all those zeros if say $250k or 250k (assuming not a currency) will do.
You can see it here
By Gerald Higgins
Well, here goes with the simple solution (in 2003).
Right click the chart, and select Chart Options.
On the AXES tab, there are 3 options under “Category (X) axis”.
I think the option for Time scale was originally selected.
The option for “Automatic” also does not work.
But the option for “Category” does work.
All the commenters with an answer will receive their discount codes by this weekend. Enjoy.
Lear more about making better charts using these chart busters examples:
- Asset Allocation Charts – Done the right way
- Calorie chart – How much you should exercise for what you eat – fixed properly
6 Responses to “Make VBA String Comparisons Case In-sensitive [Quick Tip]”
Another way to test if Target.Value equal a string constant without regard to letter casing is to use the StrCmp function...
If StrComp("yes", Target.Value, vbTextCompare) = 0 Then
' Do something
End If
That's a cool way to compare. i just converted my values to strings and used the above code to compare. worked nicely
Thanks!
In case that option just needs to be used for a single comparison, you could use
If InStr(1, "yes", Target.Value, vbTextCompare) Then
'do something
End If
as well.
Nice tip, thanks! I never even thought to think there might be an easier way.
Regarding Chronology of VB in general, the Option Compare pragma appears at the very beginning of VB, way before classes and objects arrive (with VB6 - around 2000).
Today StrComp() and InStr() function offers a more local way to compare, fully object, thus more consistent with object programming (even if VB is still interpreted).
My only question here is : "what if you want to binary compare locally with re-entering functions or concurrency (with events) ?". This will lead to a real nightmare and probably a big nasty mess to debug.
By the way, congrats for you Millions/month visits 🙂
This is nice article.
I used these examples to help my understanding. Even Instr is similar to Find but it can be case sensitive and also case insensitive.
Hope the examples below help.
Public Sub CaseSensitive2()
If InStr(1, "Look in this string", "look", vbBinaryCompare) = 0 Then
MsgBox "woops, no match"
Else
MsgBox "at least one match"
End If
End Sub
Public Sub CaseSensitive()
If InStr("Look in this string", "look") = 0 Then
MsgBox "woops, no match"
Else
MsgBox "at least one match"
End If
End Sub
Public Sub NotCaseSensitive()
'doing alot of case insensitive searching and whatnot, you can put Option Compare Text
If InStr(1, "Look in this string", "look", vbTextCompare) = 0 Then
MsgBox "woops, no match"
Else
MsgBox "at least one match"
End If
End Sub