Several questions about x-y scattergraphs in Excel 2007

[joelc]

I have just transitioned to Excel 2007 from previous versions. I am an experienced Excel and VBA user. I have some questions about the 2007 version that may just stem from my frustration about what I perceive to be changes for the sake of changes. 1. Can I no longer drag-and-drop a new series into an existing x-y scatter graph? 2. Why is it so hard to select a series with the mouse - it seems like I have to be close to a marker (hard to see when plotting lines with no markers) and it often takes four or five clicks to get a series selected? 3. If I plot a line based on columns of x and y data (ranked, but arbitrarily chosen x values and y values calculated from y = mx + b where m and b are constant) the resulting line on the graph is almost linear but has distinct "wiggles" in it, particularly where the x-values are closely spaced. I have confirmed that this is not the effect of my monitor settings by viewing the same graph in older versions (perfectly straight, no wiggles), and by plotting (in Excel 2007) a line with the same slope but a slightly different intercept just next to the other line, but using the line endpoints only. The line plotted based on endpoints only is definitely straight, while the line plotted based on many intermediate points all falling on the same mathematical line is definitely not straight. 4. Probably related to the previous issue, I've noticed that if a line consists of many line segments, Excel 2007 cannot use contiguous dash spacing without running the dashes together where the data are closely spaced, making what looks like a solid line instead of a dashed line. This was not the case in previous versions.

 

[joelc]

Ok, mostly bumping back for a reply, but also I tried to convert to HTML to post an example, but I take too much space to adequately describe the problem. I don't know if a file transfer site is cool here, but I have one if anyone would like to take a look at my example.