Using the Format Menus

Once a chart is finished and the Chart Expert is closed, two new menu items become available. By right-clicking on the chart object in design mode, you are given two formatting specific menu options: Format and Format Chart. The Format menu gives you the standard formatting dialog box that you’ve already seen with the other report objects. It lets you select options such as suppressing the object and changing the border. These have already been discussed in detail in Chapter 4 and you can reference that chapter if you need more information.

The Format Chart menu item is specific to the chart object and it gives you four new menu items: Template, General, Titles and Grid. Each of these menu items opens a new dialog box with options that provide you with the ability to add a finer amount of customization to your chart. This menu is shown in Figure 10-10.

Figure 10-10. The Format Chart menu items.

You probably won’t need to use these menu options with the majority of your reports. The formatting options provided by the Chart Expert will serve most of your needs on a daily basis. But there will be times when you want to take one of the options in the Chart Expert and fine tune it to a greater degree. That is when you will use these menu options.

A lot of the functionality in the Chart Expert is duplicated by these menu options. But in addition to that, they also give you many more selections to choose from. It’s the multitude of selections that make these menu items powerful. Since you won’t need to reference them very often and they are easy to understand, you are left to explore them in more detail on your own.