Knowledge Base

Cannot Add Error Bars to Chart That Contains Many Series

Article ID: 180518

Article Last Modified on 8/17/2005

Microsoft Excel 97 Standard Edition
Microsoft Excel 95 Standard Edition
Microsoft Excel 5.0 Standard Edition
Microsoft Excel 98 for Macintosh

This article was previously published under Q180518

SYMPTOMS

If you attempt to add error bars to a series in a chart, the following problems may occur:

In the Error Bars tab in the Format Data Series dialog box, the Both, Plus, or Minus boxes are empty. When you click them, nothing happens.
If you run a Visual Basic macro that attempts to add error bars to a series in the chart, you may receive the following error message:
Run-time error '1004':
ErrorBar method of Series class failed

CAUSE

These problems occur if the chart contains a combined total of 255 series and sets of error bars. Note that each set of error bars that you add to a chart acts as a series.

For example, if you create a chart that contains a single series, and you add both Plus and Minus error bars to the series, the chart acts as if it contains 3 series: one actual series, plus two sets of error bars.

RESOLUTION

There is no way to circumvent this limitation in Microsoft Excel. To add error bars to one series, you may need to remove error bars from another series, or remove another series from the chart completely.

STATUS

Microsoft has confirmed this to be a problem in the versions of Microsoft Excel listed at the beginning of this article. This problem no longer occurs in Microsoft Excel 2000.

MORE INFORMATION

To add error bars to a series in a chart, follow these steps:

Select the series.
On the Format menu, click Selected Data Series. Click the Y Error Bars (or X Error Bars) tab.
In the Display section, select the box for the type of error bars you want to insert: Both, Plus, Minus, or None. Use the controls in the Error Amount section to set parameters for the error bars.
When you are done, click OK.

The None box is always available. The other boxes may not be available if there are too many combined series and sets of error bars in the chart.

Additional query words: XL5 XL7 XL97 XL

Keywords: kbbug KB180518