Page 242 - Excel Progamming Weekend Crash Course

n540629 ch17.qxd 9/2/03 9:35 AM Page 217

Session 17 — Introduction to Charts 217

Property Description
Top The distance in points from the top edge of the title to the top
edge of the chart area
Text The text of the title. By default this is blank.

For an example of adding a title to a chart, see Listing 17-3 later in this
session.
Cross-Ref

Chart Axis Titles
Most Excel charts have two axes (the pie chart is one exception). The horizontal axis is the
category axis, and the vertical axis is the value axis. By default, neither axis is given a title,
but you can add titles as required by your application.
A chart’s axes are referenced by means of the Chart object’s Axes collection. You identify
which axis, value, or category you are referring to by using the constants xlCategory and
xlValue. Thus, the code
SomeChart.Axes(xlCategory)
references the chart’s category axis, while

SomeChart.Axes(xlValue)

references its value axis. To add a title to an axis, set its HasTitle property to True;
then use the AxisTitle.Text property to set the title. For example, assuming that ch
refers to an existing chart:

ch.Axes(xlValue).HasTitle = True
ch.Axes(xlValue).AxisTitle.Text = “Sales by region”
To remove a title from an axis, set the HasTitle property to False. To modify an existing
axis title, change the AxisTitle.Text property. (Changing the font of an axis title is cov-
ered later in this session.)

Removing an axis title by setting HasTitle to False does not simply hide the
title, but destroys it. To later add a title, you must recreate it from scratch.
Tip

Be sure to set HasTitle to True before trying to work with the AxisTitle
object. If you do not, an error occurs.
Note
The program in Listing 17-3 is an improvement on the program presented earlier in this
session. It creates a chart from the worksheet data presented earlier (see Figure 17-3), with
the addition of a chart title and axis titles on both the value and category axes. The result-
ing chart is shown in Figure 17-6.