Charting in Mercury

Charting in Mercury

Mercury charts are:

    • available for pivot reports only.
    • interactive.  A chart is based on data you select on a pivot-report result canvas.  If you change your selection, the chart automatically changes to match.​​​​
Table reports offer “sparklines”, which are miniature charts integrated into the report. (See here for more on sparklines.) You can export your table-report to Excel if you want to do other types of charting.
To create a chart: 

  1. Run a pivot report, or select a pivot-report that’s already open. 

  1. In the Ribbon, choose Pivot Tools > Pivot Chart 

 

  1. In the pivot report, select the data you want to chart. You do this by clicking and dragging the mouse to select the data you want. 

In the example below, we have selected all  except the PostingType field. 

  1. Choose the type of chart you want to display. 

  1. Click one of the basic chart-types shown in the left area of the ribbon 

  1. Choose a specific chart sub-type from the gallery that appears. 

      In this example we chose a Column chart (also called a Bar chart) and then selected the  

      simplest 2-D Column type. 

                  

 

The chart corresponding to your selected data and chart-type is displayed in a separate chart-tab. 

Note: as mentioned above, the chart is interactive.  If you change your selected data in the pivot-report, the chart display will automatically change too.


 

 

Chart options 

In addition to the set of available chart-types, the chart ribbon (shown above) contains the following controls. 

 

  • Palette: a list of color palettes for the chart.  The exact set you see depends on the version of Mercury that you have installed. 

       

 

  • Chart Select Only (a toggle): when depressed (“on”), chart shows only the data you have selected (highlighted) on the report.   When “off”, the chart shows all the data in the report regardless of what (if anything) is selected on the pivot report. 

  • Data By Column: Displays the data by column in the chart 

  • Data By Row: Displays the data by row in the chart.

  • By Column and By Row are mutually exclusive.  Exactly one of them is always selected.  If you click the other, that becomes selected and the original is de-selected. 

      Column Grand totals: controls whether column grand totals are included in the chart. 

  • Row Grand Totals: controls whether row grand totals are included in the chart. 

       Show Legend: Displays/ hides a legend on the chart.  

     Designer (this is an experimental feature): opens the a window that allows you to control in detail many of the chart

      settings.


Crosshair (this is an experimental feature): Tracks the movement of the mouse within a pivot chart and displays various details according to the mouse’s position.  


  

  1. Crosshair: Checking/unchecking the main “Crosshair” item at the top controls whether any of the detail is displayed. You can show any combination of vertical/horizontal lines (“crosshairs”) and labels. Crosshairs are available for scatter charts, line charts, area charts, and for the line and area portions of combo charts.
  2. Show Argument Line: shows a vertical line (corresponds to a position on the x-axis).
  3. Show Value Line: shows a horizontal line (corresponds to a position on the y-axis).
  4. Show Argument Labels: shows a label along the x-axis corresponding to the mouse’s position.
  5. Show Value Labels: shows a label along the y-axis corresponding to the mouse’s position. 

 In the example below, enabling the “Show value labels” option under the Crosshair here displays the value labels in the chart as we scroll through it.  (This is a static screenshot.  In actual use, only one of those labels would appear at any given type, and would change according to your mouse position.) 

 

 

 

Misc (this is an experimental feature): Offers control over various other charting options. 

 

 


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