Excel Graphs using Office Report Generation

Question

I'm using Office Report Generation and I would like to add a grpah to my excel spreadsheet using existing excel spread sheet data. 
Right now the only way I can add a grpah is to load the data into labview and create a graph in a 2d array.  However that way the graph has no linkage to the data in the exc el spreadsheet.  I can't use a template to create the graph then load the data because different results require different methods.  However if I could modify an existing graph within labview I could use the template but I can't index a now labview created graph.
Can anyone suggest anything?

Answer 1

Hello,
Thanks for posting to the NI Discussion Forums!  I think you might
be right, and there might not be a conventional way to create your
graph from the Report Toolkit (after all this is designed more to
create a report from known and unchanging data that you can move to
excel for demo purposes).  There might be some other ways to do
this.
My first recommendation if you would like to stick with the Report Gen.
VIs, you can design an Excel Macro to generate a graph from the
spreadsheet.  LabVIEW can execute the Excel Macro through the
Report VIs (see the Report Generation->Excel Specific->Excel
Advanced->Excel Macros palette).  There are some good examples
and documentation out there about calling Excel Macros:
http://venus.ni.com/stage/we/niepd_web_display.DIS​PLAY_EPD4?p_answer=&p_guid=B45EACE3DD2F56A4E034080​020E74861&p_node=DZ53040&p_rank=&p_source=Internal​&p_submitted=N
http://venus.ni.com/stage/we/niepd_web_display.DIS​PLAY_EPD4?p_answer=&p_guid=B45EACE3D9D856A4E034080​020E74861&p_node=DZ53003&p_rank=&p_source=Internal​&p_submitted=N
http://venus.ni.com/stage/we/niepd_web_display.DIS​PLAY_EPD4?p_answer=&p_guid=B45EACE3DC6D56A4E034080​020E74861&p_node=DZ53003&p_rank=&p_source=Internal​&p_submitted=N
http://zone.ni.com/reference/en-XX/manuals/323805A​-01/RepGenUG_07/
If you do not want to use the macros, you might have more luck using
ActiveX, or other means in which to interface with Excel than are
provided in the Report Generation Toolkit.  There are countless
examples and discussions about Excel, LabVIEW and ActiveX so I won't
spend too much time here on it, but if you think you might want to use
this as an option, let us know and I can see about finding some
examples on it for you.
Hopefully this helps!  Please let us know how things go.
Travis M
LabVIEW R&D
National Instruments