Changing graph type, color change

Question

Why when I change the type of graph it changes the colors automatically. I had blue, green, red (in the 3d fills) for a bar graph respectively representing 2009,2010,2011. I am adding this year I wanted to switch to a line graph - why are the colors changing auto to add a yellow and making 2012 red? How can I stop this? I find it quite difficult to change the colors of all the lines/symbols using the 3D fills, actually it doesn't work very well @ all, so I would prefer not to have to do this for 10 graphs per client @ 5 clients. Is there a more efficient way to accomplish this?
Also brings me to my next question. I was attempting to use the copy style, paste style function with the graphs - to ease the pain of all of this. When I do that it only pastes the axis scale (exactly what I don't want copied)! Is there a way to c&p the STYLE...the colors, weight, and data symbols of the lines. Therefore if I must do all the color change manually I would only have to do it once?
Thanks so much.

Answer 1

Here's an example, using a Line Graph.
The first graph uses the full table, which has a column for each year, and extends to 2017, using 'placeholder data.'
For the second, all of the data, and the header labels (year) was deleted from the table.
Not good for presentation (nor was the table with all those empty cells), so columns E (2012) to J were selected and Hidden.
When data became available for 2012 (ie. about 10 or 11 months from now), the hidden columns were Unhidden, the label and data were entered into column E (2012), and columns F - J were again Hidden.
I haven't tried this with bar graphs yet. A closer look at the structure of your data and a screen shot of a sample bar graph would be useful in avoiding a 40 day trek through the wilderness.
Regards,
Barry