Sizing It Right

Resizing the chart

Charts can be resized by using the Chart Size panel, by sizing the chart to fit the window, or by directly dragging out the border of the chart to the desired size.

The Chart Size panel, found at Chart->Set Chart Size, allows sizing the chart in units of inches, centimeters, points or picas. Also found in this panel is a switch labeled Constrain Proportions.  When this option is selected, the width-to-height proportions of the chart are maintained as the chart size is provided.

To size the chart to fit inside the Chart View in the Chart Window, just click the menu item Chart->Size_To_Fit_Window.

To resize a chart directly, position the cursor over one of the "hot" regions found at the bottom, far right, or bottom right corner of the chart. When the cursor is over a hot region, it changes to the appropriate resize cursor. Once the cursor is over a hot region, click and drag to resize the chart.

The cursor that displays over the hot region along the southern border of the chart changes only the height, the cursor that displays over the hot region along the eastern side changes only the width, and the cursor that displays over the hot region at the lower right corner changes both height and width. Note that enlarging a chart in this manner requires the Chart View be larger than the chart. This is accomplished by enlarging the Chart Window, leaving a white region in the Chart View to the right and below the chart.

When the Chart Window is resized and the Chart View is smaller than the chart, scroll buttons will appear in the scroll bars at the left and bottom of the Chart View.

If the chart is resized to be smaller than its original size, and some of the graphical elements are pushed off the chart by this resizing action, a panel will display providing the user the option to normalize the chart so that all graphical elements  are again within the bounds of the chart (see normalizing below).

Normalizing the chart

When a chart is resized, its components are not resized, sometimes resulting in unpleasing placement of the components. To correct this problem, you can either reposition and resize each component manually, or normalize. Selecting the Chart->Normalize menu item resizes all chart components based on the current size of the chart, and repositions all components based on the default chart layout used when the chart is initially created. Since annotations do not have standard locations or sizes, they are not moved or resized by Normalize. The exception to this is when an annotation lies outside the chart borders, in which case it is repositioned to the center of the chart. Normalize is also useful if you drag a chart object out of view, and cannot locate it. Simply normalize and the object will be placed at a standard location within the chart border.