Issue 11890

See Ideas and Feature Wishes for the new Chart.



*** This issue has been marked as a duplicate of 7074 ***

closed

reopen issue because the duplicate setting was wrong

The ability to change the names of dataseries directly in chart is a missing
feature which we should introduce. How the feature should be offered at the gui
has to be defined still.

set to started

IHA->BM: As you are on the legend please take care of this issue.

I see this could be solved by adding the ability to use the series
names/legends/Titles as cells not directly tied to the table.   If I have a
table that is A5:C30, allow me to set my legends as either individual cells
anywhere in the workbook or sheet.  Thus I could have my legends in E1:E3

Then if I edit the names in the properties dialog, I change the data in the cell.

I feel that this should be part of a new UI design for editting chart properties
and data.

Using Milestone 7 on Linux, it is possible to set the legend name in a cell.  In
fact, it seems to be the only way to get a legend name of a new series.

Being able to name items via cells is great.  Formatting?

There is a problem.  If you change the cell data, the chart information doesn't
automatically update.  Also, depending on which way the chart is created, you
may not have any selection for a series legend.  I only tried it in a "bar chart".

->mestech: We usually use the term "label" for the name of a data series. This
is the text that you might get from a cell and which gives a name to the series.
The "legend" is an object that shows small icons representing the series and the
series label next to it for all series in a diagram.

When you say legend instead of label this confuses us, so please use the terms
as I described them.

The automatic update of data currently doesn't work always. There is a technical
issue we have to solve before updates can be done reliably. See
http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Chart2#Update_of_the_Chart_on_changed_Data
for details.

What do you mean by "Formatting?"? You want to take the format of the cell to be
used in the legend? I see this issue as problematic. First, in a chart we do not
have all formatting properties that you have in a cell, so you would have to
choose a subset. Also, I think that often, you don't want the same font size in
the legend than in the cells, and especially the legend entries should all have
the same font size. Otherwise, the legend would look quite strange. The only
thing I could imagine would be a bold or italic text, but this is also
difficult, as in a cell you can have text with different formatting (three
words, only one in bold) which doesn't fit into the concept of passing the label
as string via the API.

Okay, I have to learn the terminology.

Thanks for the wiki link.

The label is what I meant within in the legend.

What I was trying to convey is the ability to change the label from within the
legend or from a defined cell.  Or change the cell from which the legend label
is taken.  Not the first row or column but any defined cell.

When I refer to formatting, I do mean the cell formatting.  Thus if the cell is
using a set font or is a formula, then it can be displayed as such. 
Superscript, subscript or bold as options.  I could live without bold but
super/sub script are necessary.  Cannot the xml formatting be passes as well?

Not knowing the full API (I wish I had the time) makes it hard to know the
limititaions.  I do see this as an issue that in my opinion calls for the API to
be changed.  Science does not always use block text.  There are times when the
label requires a superscipt or subscript in my work.

The Edit features are not working as I stated in my comment.

I created a chart and then added an extra data series.  There was no way to
create a label for the series in the chart using the edit features within
milestone 7.  Even using the chart wizard to edit, didn't change the legend
label.  It remained the default label.  This could be part of the update issue.

I will have to expand on this by actually doing a sample when I have a bit more
time.

I second the super-/subscript formatting idea. Looks ugly without. :)

This issue is related to issue 16241.

*** Issue 83460 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. ***

*** Issue 88502 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. ***

Sorry, but I'm quite surprised why issue 88502 has been marked as duplicate of
this one. 
As I understand, this issue is concerned with possible features of OOCalc
itself, not with interoperability with MS Office, in spite of the fact that some
of the mentioned features are present in Excel.
Quite the opposite, issue 88502 is connected with import question. You can set
label from cell in Excel, and you can do it in OOCalc. But if you bind a label
to the definite cell in Excel, you will see that this binding is missing in
OOCalc during import process and the label is being displayed as "Column B" or
so. In my opinion, those are different problems.
Excuse me again, please, for my disagreement.

PS. I'm a scientist too, and I come round to mestech's opinion. It will be very
useful to have label supporting subscripts and superscripts.

change owner

*** Issue 93147 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. ***

Is this issue (11890) becoming a catchall for all chart legend editing issues?
If so, then 93147 comes here.

If not, then issue 93147 should be reassigned to 28670 not 11890 as it refers to
resizing a chart legend box, not editing data series labels within the legend.

My apologies for opening 93147: my initial search of existing issues did not
show up 28670 for some reason, but I did find 11890 and decided my issue was not
related.

@rnhainsworth, no please not one issue for only vaguely related things. You did
it completely right as you did it. And you are also right that your issue 93147
should be reassigned to 28670. I've corrected that now. Also thanks for querying
before submitting an issue!

I'm incredulous that Chart lets the user modify: Legend borders, background
color, transparency and gradient (for crying out loud), font and font effects,
but still, more than *** 6 YEARS *** after this ticket was opened, won't allow
the user to modify the only property that really matters in the Legend: the
label text! I mean, what good does a legend that specifies only "Column A"
"Column B" etc do anyway? It just wastes space.

This is a major reason that I've continue to use an old version of Excel under
VMware for the past several years on my Linux box.

I've just used my maximum of 2 votes to vote for this issue.

Is anybody working on this??? (It certainly appears the answer is no.) Why not?
Do you believe it is not important? Maybe you should just close it and relieve
users of apparently false hope...

I almost puked when I found out it is not possible to change the legend text. 
You have got to be kidding me.

fmyhr, gamer945091, all, you can change the text displayed in the legend, it is
only that you can not change it directly within the legend.
Here is the work around for now: The new text needs to be in a cell somewhere in
the spreadsheet. Then open the Data Ranges dialog within chart and go to the
Data Sereis tab page. Here you can select each series and choose a cell range
for its name. Choose the cell that contains your wanted text. This name is then
displayed in the legend.
And yes I agree that this should be enhanced, but in the moment the file format
does not allow to save an arbitrary entered text in addition and a workaround
exists.

Hello,

I'd just like to point out that the workaround only partially works.  Where I
have been bitten by this missing feature is I commonly receive Excel
spreadsheets and when I open them up the legends are all messed up.  So if I
want the correct legends, I have to educate my excel-using co-workers to use the
workaround approach in excel.  The other possibility is I open their documents
with excel to see what the legends were supposed to look like, then open with
open office and modify it and send it back to them (so when I get a revised
version I don't have to do it all again).  And then I need to explain to them
that they need this workaround in excel to accommodate me and then they ask why
I don't just use excel and not deal with the compatibility problems.

So.... I'd very much like to see this feature added if no other reason than to
allow importing of charts from excel.

Thanks
-Dan

Linear regressions on a scatter-plot chart result in a legend entry being made
for both the data set and the linear regression of the data set. If you have
more than one data set, the chart legend becomes cluttered and ugly because of
the unnecessary legend entries for the regression lines. The 'workaround' does
nothing to fix this problem. In science it is of utmost importance to be able to
make READABLE FIGURES. It is annoying that this is impossible to do with Open
Office due to the chart legend editing problems. In my mind, Open Office is
still inferior to Excel for this reason alone, and I am going back to Excel
until the problem is fixed.

*** Issue 92394 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. ***