I have been working on this large horizontal bar chart. It has about 100 items to show as bars of different sizes, and requires 100 text boxes for comments. I HAVE A PROBLEM WITH TEXT BOXES BECAUSE THEY DISAPPEAR CONTINUALLY. If I click the area where a text box is, then it comes back. But I can not show all 100 text boxes at the same time because some of them always disappear until I click them back to re-appear. I need some advice on how to take care of this problem. I just feel that there is some wrong setup in my Excel. I went to Excel Help, but could not find anything useful.

Sincerely,

Frank.

Frank:

I've had similar problems. Try either of the following:
- Change the display settings of your monitor to a higher resolution, or
- Shrink the chart

For me, the problem occurs when the chart gets too big. The display becomes unstable and text boxes start disappearing from the chart, usually from the outermost edges first. Your text boxes should still show up on a preview screen.

If you make the chart long enough, all of your text boxes will start disappearing when you click your mouse anywhere outside the chart area.

Good luck

Tom Barone

Thanks, Tom

I was looking for the answer, and Microsoft Helpdesk sent me to talk to someone in India, which was not too much of help. I really appreciate your response.

You stated, "Change the display settings of your monitor to a higher resolution." How do I do this? Please let me know.

Making the chart size smaller would make it difficult to read.

I would appreciate your response.

By the way, I think Microsoft should fix this problem but they do not because not enough people are complaining about this problem.

Thanks again.

Frank.

Hi Frank. Changing the resolution is easy.

Use the [START] button and open up [CONTROL PANEL]. Once the control panel opens, to to [DISPLAY]. Select the "Settings tab" from the window.

The current resolution will show on the lower left corner of the screen. To increase the resolution, slide the bar to the right.

Tom

Hi Tom,
Thanks for providing the answer. I checked and it shows already at the max. resolution.
I GUESS I am stuck with what I got.

This appears to be matter with the memory MS allowed for Excel chart display.

Thanks again.

Frank.

Maybe you shouldn't put the comments on the chart itself. How about a legend UNDER the chart that has the explanatory text

Hi Scott,
Are you proposing to put 100 legend items in a bar chart? This may not be impossible to do, but I got to think about this. I will let you know after I try. Some of the problem might be the content for each of the 100 text boxes is several lines. However, this is a new angle. I will try and let you know. I still think that the best way is for MS to fix the problem.

Thanks.

Frank

No I meant put them in the spreadsheet under the chart.