Databases Reference
In-Depth Information
Notice we have to select a year for the months to be shown. In this case, we have
selected
2011
in the
Year
listbox.
While this already looks quite nice, we will make a few extra changes:
• As we are more interested in the trend than in the exact values, the axis does
not necessarily need to start at
0
• We will add dots on the actual data points so it is clear for the user where to
point their mouse cursor in case they do want to see the exact values
• The numbers on the Y-axis are quite big; we will format the numbers so that
they are shown in thousands, millions, or billions depending on the selection
Follow these steps to apply the changes:
1. Right-click on the
Traffic per Year
chart and select
Properties…
.
2. Navigate to the
Axes
tab and deselect the
Forced 0
checkbox.
3. Activate the
Expressions
tab and click on the plus icon next to the circular
arrow to display the list of expressions.
4. For each expression, individually mark the
Symbol
checkbox under the
Display Options
section and select
Dots
from the drop-down list.
5. Open the
Presentation
tab and set the
Symbol Size
option to
4pt
under the
Line/Symbol Settings
section; this sets the size of the dots.
6. Open the
Number
tab and select all expressions by clicking on the first
expression (
# of Flights
) and then holding
Shift
while clicking on the last
expression (
Transported Mail
). All expressions will be highlighted.
7. In the
Thousand Symbol
input field enter
x Thousand
.
8. In the
Million Symbol
box enter
x Million
.
9. In the
Billion Symbol
box enter, you guessed it,
x Billion
.
10. Click on
OK
to apply the changes and close the
Chart Properties
dialog.
The resulting line chart is shown in the following screenshot:
