Bubble Graph

suas

We would like to put up a chart on our website showing details of our expenditure, and using a bubble chart (just 'cos it's a little more interesting than a pie chart!)

We have instructions on how to make them in Excel - http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/excel/HA011170761033.aspx -

but it's a bit boring looking.

Does anyone know of any other programmes for making graphs - especially free ones?!

5uspect

Can't you just change the default settings in Excel to sex it up a bit?
Hide the axes, and add text labels etc.

Funkytown

Illustrator has graph generating options

5uspect

But its far from free!

There is the 30 day free trial.
You can also just copy paste teh excel graph directly into Illustrator and edit it from there.
The graphing tools in Illustrator are a bit clunky.

p

Office 2007 has much nicer styles for graphs.

Dublin_Gunner

5uspect wrote: »

But its far from free!

There is the 30 day free trial.
You can also just copy paste teh excel graph directly into Illustrator and edit it from there.
The graphing tools in Illustrator are a bit clunky.

What??? Why on earth would you paste a crap excel graph into illy?

Illy can create beautiful graphs, 3d, shapes, colours, gradients, transparency's - the list goes on. Anytime I want to create decent charts / graphs, particularly for presentations, I fire up illy.

5uspect

Sure, but the spreadsheet tool in Illustrator is a clunky piece of poo.
You simply can't do complex plots with it.
The final results are great, yes, I'm not denying that.
There's nothing crap about copying an excel plot for a beauty session.

Anyway I do all my plotting in Matlab!

Dublin_Gunner

Well you may as well just do the whole thing in Illy than do it in excel!

But yes, for complex plots, obviously dedicated software is a must - especially for an engineer

5uspect

Well I am an Engineer!

Hank_Scorpio

If you like the results of Microsoft graphs but want the sharpness of illustrator and the finish that gives,

Make a PDF of the graph (you can use CutePDF or a free pdf generator) and then open the PDF up in Illustrator.

You can use Illustrator to tidy up and choose colours etc.

Dublin_Gunner

Hank_Scorpio wrote: »

If you like the results of Microsoft graphs but want the sharpness of illustrator and the finish that gives,

Make a PDF of the graph (you can use CutePDF or a free pdf generator) and then open the PDF up in Illustrator.

You can use Illustrator to tidy up and choose colours etc.

I'd still rather do the whole graph in Illy. You can generate pretty much any type of graph in Illy that you can in MS Office. But you don't have to export / import PDF, its fully editable, and you're not duplicating work.

Just IMO.

5uspect

You don't even need to go to the hassle of exporting a PDF. Just copy the graphic directly from excel and paste it directly into a document in Illustrator.

I do like the ability to go back and edit data in Illustrator. It's something important you lose when you just use an excel graph.

Dublin_Gunner

5uspect wrote: »

You don't even need to go to the hassle of exporting a PDF. Just copy the graphic directly from excel and paste it directly into a document in Illustrator.

I do like the ability to go back and edit data in Illustrator. It's something important you lose when you just use an excel graph.

Not even the data, the entire graphic is editable properly if done in Illy from the get-go, which is the bit I like

Couldn't care less about what figures people are trying to manipulate others by, once they look nice