Can you create a chart on a dashboard with blank rows?

Pauline J

I have a metric that will report, month over month, new values as they are calculated and added to a sheet. There is an automation that runs each month to copy the current metric row, and place it in a historical sheet. The challenge is that the chart must be re-configured every month to include the new row.

Is there any way to set the range so that I don't have to manually upddate the historical charts every month?

I tried creating a report with the columns from the history sheet, however, the Primary column is not applicable to the metric, and I can't figure out how to bypass it (even hidden, it appears in the chart range), and it messes up the charting.

I am open to any suggestions — my goal is to not have to update anything manually in our metric reporting.

SoS | Dan Palenchar

Hello @Pauline J,

Not certain this would work but you can try to blank out the Primary column (use a clear cell automation when the rows are added… if you need to retain it use a Copy Row to get the rows to another Sheet and then clear it there) and move it to the right of the report.

SoS | Dan Palenchar

Hello @Pauline J,

Not certain this would work but you can try to blank out the Primary column (use a clear cell automation when the rows are added… if you need to retain it use a Copy Row to get the rows to another Sheet and then clear it there) and move it to the right of the report.

Pauline J

Hi @SoS | Dan Palenchar

That's an interesting suggestion for moving the Primary — I may need to rebuld all the other sheets in order to incorporate that… but might work. I'm going to give it a try and I'll let you know. I appreciate the input!

Pauline J

@SoS | Dan Palenchar thanks for the suggestion — I was able to get my charts to work! Moving the Primary to the far right was the answer. So simple … but powerful! 😃

SoS | Dan Palenchar

@Pauline J glad it worked quick and easy!

SoS | Dan Palenchar

@Pauline J glad it worked quick and easy!

Paul Newcome

You shouldn't need to adjust anything in your sheets or reports. You should be able to select which columns are being used for the chart within the widget settings.

Pauline J

@Paul Newcome Thank you for adding to the discussion! Because of the way the sheets work, I can't use the all columns in the reports or I lose the Horizontal axis labels …. But I've got it worked out, and my charts are able to expand automatically each month on the dashboards as new data is collected from the intake process.

Paul Newcome

My apologies. I didn't mean for you to use the "all columns" option. That was just what happened to be used for the chart I took a screenshot of. The screenshot was meant to show where you can exclude report columns from your chart.

Based on this portion of your original post:

"I tried creating a report with the columns from the history sheet, however, the Primary column is not applicable to the metric, and I can't figure out how to bypass it (even hidden, it appears in the chart range), and it messes up the charting."

You can use the above settings to check and uncheck specific columns which will allow you to exclude the Primary column from the chart but still leave it in place in your report.