Hi

We have just recently rolled out office 2010 to all our office computers. when creating graphs now the title and data lables can not be resized. Whe you go to the "format Data Lables" and then click on alignment the Autofit and Internal Margin option is grayed out.

Does anyone know how to fix this?

Regards

Barry

Hi,

 

 

I thought that AutoFit was only dealing with row and column size in the cells of the worksheet itself.

 

Perhaps it is greyed out because you are in the chart and not on a worksheet cell.

 

Also you caused this due to hitting some combination of keys by accident.

 

Check the setting of Objects on the main options dialog.

 

Use the menu File > Options and on the View tab make sure the setting of Objects is Show All.

 

Sincerely,

 

Harry 

 

• Marked as answer by Harry YuanModerator Friday, May 27, 2011 9:12 AM

Hi,

 

 

I thought that AutoFit was only dealing with row and column size in the cells of the worksheet itself.

 

Perhaps it is greyed out because you are in the chart and not on a worksheet cell.

 

Also you caused this due to hitting some combination of keys by accident.

 

Check the setting of Objects on the main options dialog.

 

Use the menu File > Options and on the View tab make sure the setting of Objects is Show All.

 

Sincerely,

 

Harry 

 

In Excel 2010, there is no "View" Tab. I too would like to be able to determine my "fit" for chart items such as the title.

Yep, I'm having the same problem with Excel 2010.  It's frustrating as heck:  All I want to do is increase the size of the title text box for my chart title so I can have a larger font.  When I increase the font size, it automatically wraps the text to the next line, which I don't want.  So I tried what I've done for the past ten years with Excel 2003:  Enlarge the text box.  But it won't give me anyplace to "grab" the box to make it larger.  When I double click on the chart title box, I get the "Format Chart Title" window.  Under "Alignment", all of the boxes for "Autofit" are grayed out, specifically "Resize shape to fit text" and "Allow text to overflow shape".  Suggestions?

I'm joining this item because my "Title" has no margin - it's "way too tight".

I have given the title a background gradient, which is working fine, but now I need some padding around the title text, and all the "internal margin" checkboxes are grayed out.

Here's a work-around while we're all waiting for Microsoft.

Left edge: [space]
Right edge: ALT+0160 [non-breaking space] -- Excel will trim a regular space
Top, middle, bottom: Add blank lines with font-size "8" (smallest available)

It's crude, but it helps get around the crippled "text [title] box" prope

Leksom describes it perfectly. I have not found a hint/solution after 40mins of research. This is horrible. Please, Microsoft, solve it quickly.

• Proposed as answer by xlewis21 Wednesday, August 01, 2012 3:31 PM
• Unproposed as answer by xlewis21 Wednesday, August 01, 2012 3:31 PM

Looks like under the 'Review' tab. You can choose 'Unprotect Workbook'. This was the fix for me.

Xlewis21, I'm wondering if you may not be talking about something different... or if I am the one missing something. My workbook is not protected by default so I can't select "Unprotect Workbook". Are you saying you are now able to independently adjust the width of your chart-titles?

I was able to simply make the size of the chart itself (by holding it and dragging it inwards), thus creating more room in the overall box for my title. Hope this helps!

• Proposed as answer by Minamims Wednesday, September 19, 2012 12:22 AM

Okay, late to the party but I don't do this for a living anymore.  Here's my total kluge but it works.<o:p></o:p>

Step one, insert a space in an otherwise colourless, lifeless chart title.  This preserves the space at the top of the chart.<o:p></o:p>

Step two, insert a text box and format to your heart's content.  If my chart has a complex background such as a gradient fill, I leave my text box transparent.  The text box will have all the grabby handles and text formatting abilities we all know and love.<o:p></o:p>

Interesting observation: When my chart title overflowed and I started to search for a solution and someone suggested copying the text from outside.  So first I grabbed the text in my chart title, copied it to a regular cell and then tried to copy it to my text box.  When the title overflowed, Excel (not me) had automatically added a carriage return.  <o:p></o:p>

Now if I was programming this for MS, I would use my textbox object as my chart title with a little extra code around it to customize it for the chart.  Good OOP would suggest MS does not need to create an entirely new object called chart title when the text box works so well.  Based on that guess, I wonder if someone purposefully or accidentally programmed in a carriage return. <o:p></o:p>

If someone has a better fix, I'm all ears.

Just adding my complaint to this very old thread...not because it will do any good but just because I'm mad.  =/  When I resize my columns so there should be plenty of room for large labels even though the chart itself is small, my data labels can't be set larger than 6 points without wrapping.  There is PLENTY of room on each side of the label, yet when I go to Format Data Labels, Alignment, the options that might help me are grayed out (Autofit and Internal margin).  Why!!!!????  Microsoft Chart has always been a piece of junk, and I didn't think it was possible it could get even worse in new versions, but it seems they have achieved that goal.  No doubt due to lots of hard work and wasted money.