Using The Data Fill Panel

Chartsmith provides a Data Fill panel used to produce sequential sets of data or labels. The Data Fill Panel can be used to create data sets that follow a pattern, or label row or columns with days of the week, months, quarters or dates.

To use the Data Fill panel, first select the range of cells in the Data View that you wish to fill. If you wish to fill row or series column labels, first select the rows or columns, then select the Data_View->Select_Labels_Only menu item. Next enter a start string (see Start String Formats below) and a numeric step size. Select the units to be applied to the step size, and select whether the fill should be by row or by column. Now click the Fill button.


Start String Formats

There are nine different formats used to categorize the data fill start string. Each is processed differently.
  Alphabetic
This is the format used in generating the default series column labels. If the start string is "A", the seqence will follow thru the alphabet, e.g. A,B,C,..

Integer
Any integer value.

Float
Any float value.

Day of the Week
Valid day of the week formats include any day of the week as either a 3-character abbreviation or a full day name, uppercase or lowercase, e.g. tue,Tue,tuesday,or Tuesday.

Month
Valid month formats include any month name as either a 3-character abbreviation or a full month name, uppercase or lowercase, e.g. feb,Feb,february,or February.

Date
Valid date formats include the following:
DD-MMM (12-jan)
DD-MMM-YY (12-Aug-93)
DD-MMM-YYYY (3-sep-1992)
MMM-YY (Feb-92)
MMM-YYYY (mar-1993)
MM/DD (6/8)
MM/DD/YY (3/12/93)
MM/DD/YYYY (11/3/1993)

Quarter
Valid quarter formats must include an upper- or lower-case "Q" and a quarter number from 1 to 4. Optional is a trailing reference year or string. Examples of valid quarter formats: "q2", "Q1", "q 4 91", "q2 1992", "q 3 yr1992","1 q 92",...

Mixed
The mixed format start strings are those that have any combination of alphanumerics with at least one digit. The digit is incremented through the sequence. A mix format start string of "#DGK8a" would produce a sequence of "#DGK8a,#DGK9a,#DGK10a,..".

Word
The word format start strings include only characters. The sequence for such start strings appends an incremented integer to the start string for each element in the sequence. So a start string of "aBC" would produce a sequence of "aBC1,aBC2,aBC3,...".


Step sizes

Step sizes, which determine the increment between elements in the sequence, must be provided in numeric format.

Step units

The provided step units include linear, geometric, days, weeks, months and years. When using the calendar units, the step value specifies the number of days, or days per unit, i.e the number of days, days per week, days per month, and days per year.