Programming Excel with VBA and .NET

DataTable Members

Use the DataTable object to control the appearance of a data table on a chart sheet. Use the Chart object’s DataTable property to get a reference to this object. The DataTable object has the following members:

Application	AutoScaleFont
Border	Creator
Delete	Font
HasBorderHorizontal	HasBorderOutline
HasBorderVertical	Parent
Select	ShowLegendKey

Most of the DataTable members are True/False properties that enable or disable specific data table items. These properties correspond to the settings on the Format Data Table dialog box (Figure 16-9).

Before you use the DataTable object, make sure to set the chart’s HasDataTable property to True—that creates the table if it did not already exist. The following code adds a data table to the active chart and sets some of the table’s properties:

Sub AddDataTable(  )
    Dim chrt As Chart, dt As DataTable
    ' Get the chart.
    Set chrt = ActiveChart
    ' Add a data table if it doesn't have one.
    chrt.HasDataTable = True
    ' Get the data table.
    Set dt = chrt.DataTable
    ' Set the data table properties.
    ' These properties are all True by default:
    dt.ShowLegendKey = False
    dt.HasBorderHorizontal = False
    dt.HasBorderOutline = True
    dt.HasBorderVertical = True
End Sub

Figure 16-9. Data table properties correspond to these settings

Data tables may appear on chart sheets or on embedded charts, but some chart types, such as xy scatter charts, do ...