XL2000: How to Change the Taper Style for All Series in a Chart

Microsoft Excel 2000 includes many built-in chart types, including cone and pyramid charts. By default, these chart types contain cones or pyramids that taper to a point for each data point in a series; the height of each cone or pyramid is equal to the value of the data point.

You can change the shape of the cones or pyramids for a series so that they taper to the value of the largest data point in all the chart series. With this shape, all cones or pyramids for the series are the same, but they are truncated according to the values of the data points.

You cannot manually change the cones or pyramids for all of the series in a chart at one time. You must change the shape of the cones or pyramids for each series separately (one series at a time). To change the cones or pyramids for all the series at one time, you must use a Visual Basic for Applications macro.

This article provides an example macro that modifies all the series in a chart to the same shape.

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Creating the Sample Chart

Before you use the sample macro, create a chart to modify. To do this, follow these steps:

1. Save and close all open workbooks, and then create a new workbook.
2. In Sheet1 of the new workbook, type the following data:

      A1: a   B1: 1   C1: 3   D1: 2
      A3: b   B2: 4   C2: 2   D2: 1
      A3: c   B3: 5   C3: 1   D3: 3
   					

3. Select cell A1, and then click Chart on the Insert menu.
4. In step 1 of the Chart Wizard, click Cone in the Chart type list.
5. Under Chart sub-type, click the sample chart in the third row of types, and then click Finish. An embedded 3-D Cone chart appears on Sheet1.
   
   NOTE: The cones for each data point taper to a point.

Sample Macro for Changing Cone Shapes

1. Start the Visual Basic Editor (press ALT+F11).
2. On the Insert menu, click Module.
3. Type the following code in the module:

   Sub Change_Chart_Shapes()
   
      Dim x As Chart
      Dim y As Series
   
      'x is the Chart object.
      Set x = ActiveSheet.ChartObjects(1).Chart
   
      'Loop through all the chart series.
      For Each y In x.SeriesCollection
   
         'Set the series chart subtype.
         y.BarShape = xlConeToMax
   
      Next
   End Sub
   					

4. Run the Change_Chart_Shapes macro.
5. Switch to Microsoft Excel (press ALT+F11).

Each of the cones (except one) in the chart no longer tapers to a point. The only cone that tapers to a point is the cone that represents the value in cell B3, which is the greatest value in all of the chart series.