Developing Data Views with Excel in Visual Studio .NET

Generating GTIN - 12 in Visual Studio .NET Developing Data Views with Excel

To access other possible operations, you just click Commands and Options to display the Commands and Options dialog box Here you can (for example) format the cells and modify the method the spreadsheet uses to perform calculations Of course, it isn t possible to get this much functionality without paying a price In this case, the Office Spreadsheet control relies on an <object> tag of such complexity that you should use Design View to modify its features The feature also runs into problems if you re working with older versions of Office, so you can count on using this technique only for users who have Excel 2003 installed

Figure 4-6: Using a Web component has distinct advantages Sort Descending Commands and Options Refresh All

You might have noticed that Excel won t export chart data as XML, so it might seem that you can t use the Office Chart control to display a chart on-screen Because the charts you create in Excel are based on the data you define, it s possible to use the XML data to re-create your chart on a Web page using the Office Chart control The important task to perform before you try to use the Office Chart control is to create a spreadsheet using the Office Spreadsheet control Sometimes you don t want to display a spreadsheet all you want is the chart showing on-screen You still need the spreadsheet to create the chart, but you can make the spreadsheet invisible to the viewer Here s how to get this result:

dialog box and then click Finish You see the Commands and Options dialog box shown in Figure 4-7

source from the list box The source should be the Web page for which you ve created the invisible spreadsheet

You can use a number of methods to configure the spreadsheet information, but the easiest method is to copy the ranges of cells that you used for the existing chart Make sure you copy just those ranges and not the page-name information For example, if your series value in Excel is

After you describe what data to use, you need to define how to use it Click the Type tab and you see a list of chart and graph types Choose one of the options and click the Close box FrontPage displays the new chart or graph on-screen The Office Chart control is a little confusing to use because it has two different dialog boxes with different tabs and options that use the same name In addition, you must select the control for editing so it has a hashed border before you can access the dialog boxes Here s how: With the control selected for editing, right-click and choose Data from the context menu to change the data source information Right-click the control and select Commands and Options from the context menu when you want to change the configuration of the control how it displays the data You see another version of the Commands and Options dialog box, as shown in Figure 4-8

Unfortunately, neither of the Commands and Options dialog boxes lets you change the <object> tag information You can, however, modify the <object> tag indirectly, by changing ActiveX control properties and it takes only a few steps:

You can tell this is the case because there s no hashing around the border After you select the control, a context menu appears

You see the ActiveX Control Properties dialog box Figure 4-8, for example, shows one of the more interesting configuration options for a chart or graph using a 3-D chart or graph to change the view with sliders In this case, you see the effects of changes you make immediately You can also choose a perspective view or an orthographic view of the chart When you have the chart the way you like it, FrontPage changes what s in the <object> tag to reflect your choices If you get the chart or graph too far out of balance to use, click Default and FrontPage changes the settings to their original values