I have written a macro in excel 2007 to log water-level readings. Once logged, it automatically charts the data for each of the 30 wells. However, when the workbook is opened in Excel 2003, the chart does not work complaining that the chart data is too complex to be displayed (works fine in 2007).
There is one series per well (each well data is logged on a separate worksheet) and has the following formula (so that it will automatically update the chart):
=IF(COUNTA('DW1'!$D:$D)-3>0,OFFSET('DW1'!$D$6,1,0,COUNTA('DW1'!$D:$D)-3), 0)
Where DW1 is the worksheet name containing the data for well DW1.
Any ideas about what is going on? I am using the if statement so that the chart doesn't throw errors if there is no data for a well.
I am thinking that the formulas together exceed the limit of the Series data. Anyway to shorten this or change the formula?
Best Answer
In Excel 2003 and older versions, there is an unavoidable limit of 32,000 data points per series in a chart.
In order to display the chart, you need to reduce the number of data points. Either narrow the limits of the X-axis or use a filtering algorithm to remove some of the 'uninteresting' data points. You probably don't want to just decimate the data indiscriminately, as that may remove some of the highs and lows in the data series that are of interest.