Microsoft Graph

Personally, I find the Microsoft Graph program a double-edged sword. I like the aspect that you can take data that you may have in a table in Word or Access and from that construct a chart without having to go into Excel. Many of the controls are the same and editing your chart appears to be basically no different than if you were in Excel.

This is about where my frustration begins with this program. While you can make modifications to the chart using the menu commands and toolbar buttons provided by the graph program, which are much, but not completely like Excel, that is about where the similarity ends.

Your data, whether a table in Word or a data table in Access, are not linked. Once the chart is inserted a copy of the data from the table is stored independently in the embedded chart object. Changing the table data won’t affect the chart. When I tried to edit the data in my Access chart, I got this dummy chart and data that showed up with nothing to do with my data. It was basically hopeless to try to modify the data. To change the data you would have to manually enter the actual data, as well as the row and column headings. Isn’t that a waste of time when you could link a table from Excel into Word or PowerPoint?

In my opinion, Microsoft Graph is a quick and dirty program to create a pictorial representation of your data, especially from Access, and to a lesser amount from Word and PowerPoint. Basic modifications can be accomplished, but for greater control and manipulation of the data and concerning the appearance of the data, I would stick with Excel. I would also seriously consider exporting my data from Access to a format that could be imported to Excel. I think the extra steps would be greatly offset by the frustration you would be avoiding.