capture data from picture of chart
Now that the ability to get data from a picture (of a table or text), can we extend the capability to grab data from a picture of a chart?
My clients often send me screenshots of charts and ask me to put them in presentations. Usually this means the chart doesn't come close to matching the presentation, and I cannot change the font or data color, the font size, etc. So I must recreate the chart. This can be painful.
There used to be an add-in called Grabit that added the image of the chart to a spreadsheet, prompted us to click to set up our axes, input min/max of the vertical axis, then click to add each data point in a series, then start a new series and click those data points, and repeat as needed. Grabit would dump these clicks into a spreadsheet, which we could then use to create a new chart that approximates the image.
Using Goal Seek, we could get even closer. :-)
It would be incredibly helpful if Excel could provide me with data points so I can recreate a chart from a picture. Or even give me some tools like Grabit provided so that I can drive the process myself.
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Anonymous
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Many years ago (many versions of Excel ago), Excel used to integrate the Goal Seek function into a graph so that you could "grab" a graphed value (say, the height of a bar, or a point on a broken line graph) and actually move it up or down (increasing or decreasing the graphed value). If that value came from a directly entered value in a cell (say the number 10), then Excel would give me the option of changing the "10" to a value that matched the movement on the chart. If on the other hand the graphed value came from a FORMULA, then Excel would intelligently activate the Goal Seek function and ask me WHICH cell in the formula chain I want to mess with to get the end result (the graphed value) to change to the new point on the graph. It was VERY useful for the kind of work I do. But for some reason that functionality disappeared, I believe, betwen the 2003 and 2007 versions of Excel. No explanation has been given for that--wish it would come back!