Have you tried this in Excel 2007 yet? I haven’t, because I’ve never really used it much.

Hi Jon,

I’ve not tested it in Excel 2007 yet as I’ve really not used it very much either.  I do think it’s an interesting function though.  I think it’s a good charting function to at least be aware of in case the need ever does occur.   

John Mansfield

In Professional Excel Development, Stephen Bullen shows how to use it to determine where an arrow’s endpoint should be to touch the corner of a column in a column chart. I use VBA that calculates the coordinates using the number of categories, the number of series, the gap width and overlap. It feels somehow “nicer” to use VBA, but the XLM is so much faster.

I use this code to find the location to draw a circle around a spceific point on a scatter chart.

This is the Microsoft macrofun.hlp documentation for the Excel 4 XLM function SELECT which lists the values that can be used in the GET.CHART.ITEM item_text parameter.

SELECT (Syntax 3)

Selects a chart object as specified by the selection code item_text. There are three syntax forms of SELECT. Use syntax 3 to select a chart item to which you want to apply formatting; use one of the other syntax forms to select cells or objects on a worksheet or macro sheet.

Syntax

SELECT(item_text, single_point)

item_text  is a selection code from the following table which specifies which chart object to select.

item_text       To select

“Chart”          Entire chart  
“Plot”          Plot area  
“Legend”        Legend  
“Axis 1”        Primary chart value axis  
“Axis 2”        Primary chart category axis  
“Axis 3”        Secondary chart value axis or 3-D series axis  
“Axis 4”        Secondary chart category axis  
“Title”          Chart title  
“Text Axis 1”      Label for the primary chart value axis  
“Text Axis 2”      Label for the primary chart category axis  
“Text Axis 3”      Label for the primary chart series axis  
“Text n”        nth floating text item  
“Arrow n”        nth arrow  
“Gridline 1”      Major gridlines of value axis  
“Gridline 2”      Minor gridlines of value axis  
“Gridline 3”      Major gridlines of category axis  
“Gridline 4”      Minor gridlines of category axis  
“Gridline 5”      Major gridlines of series axis  
“Gridline 6”      Minor gridlines of series axis  
             
“Dropline 1”      Primary chart droplines  
“Dropline 2”      Secondary chart droplines  
“Hiloline 1”      Primary chart hi-lo lines  
“Hiloline 2”      Secondary chart hi-lo lines  
“UpBar1”        Primary chart up bar  
“UpBar2”        Secondary chart up bar  
“DownBar1”        Primary chart down bar  
“DownBar2”        Secondary chart down bar  
“Seriesline1”      Primary chart series line  
“Seriesline2”      Secondary chart series line  
“Sn”            Entire series  
“SnPm”          Data associated with point m in series n if single_point is TRUE  
“Text SnPm”      Text attached to point m of series n  
“Text Sn”        Series title text of series n of an area chart  
“Floor”          Base of a 3-D chart  
“Walls”          Back of a 3-D chart  
“Corners”        Corners of a 3-D chart  
             
“SnTm”          Trend line  
“SnEm”          Error bars  
“Legend Marker n”  Legend Marker  
“Legend Entry n”    Legend Entry  

For trend lines and error bars, the value m can be X or Y, depending on which point you want to select. If m is blank, selects both.

single_point is a logical value that determines whether to select a single point. Single_point is available only when item_text is “SnPm”.

* If single_point is TRUE, Microsoft Excel selects a single point.
* If single_point is FALSE or omitted, Microsoft Excel selects a single point if there is only one series in the chart or selects the entire series if there is more than one series in the chart.
* If you specify single_point when item_text is any value other than “SnPm”, SELECT returns an error value.

Examples

SELECT(“Chart”) selects the entire chart.
SELECT(“Dropline 2”) selects the droplines of an overlay chart.
SELECT(“S1P3”, TRUE) selects the third point in the first series.
SELECT(“Text S1”) selects the series title text of the first series in an area chart.