Chart Colors

Doug Harrison · 04/02/20

High Fives Debbie. SmartSheets really does make this complicated. I am very grateful to you and James.

David Goshorn · 04/21/20

The workaround works. But it isn't pretty. It still makes a zero spot on the pie and it also creates a fine line.

We are using this to track COVID-19 in all of our centers. and it would be nice to get rid of the zeros, but the colors have to stay consistent because they match the conditional formatting of our source data.

When any of the numbers are smaller numbers (<5 or so) the zeros next to them overlap.

Paul Newcome · 04/21/20

Yes. This can look a little sloppy with pie charts, but the other chart types tend to stay pretty clean. If you haven't already, feel free to Submit a Product Enhancement Request.

Debbie Sawyer · 04/22/20

@David Goshorn Yes, I'm afraid there are still niggly things about Charts, but like Paul has put here, you might need to submit an enhancement before they are sorted out. With the workaround from this thread in place you might find that changing the Pie Chart into a Semi circle type chart will help...drawn up a demo here to show the impact...

Hope this is useful

Kind regards

Debbie

Ramsay Zaki · 04/22/20

It has been a couple of weeks since I wrote this original post and I can now confirm that the method I state above works great. When you set up the chart (Pie, Bar, etc), you need to ensure that ALL data elements have data in the underlying table. This means you might need to put fake data in the underlying data cells for the purpose of setting up the Chart. Once you assign the colors and save the chart, do not open the widget for editing again. If you just leave the widget alone, the colors appear correctly in perpetuity.

If you do need to edit the widget, you need to go back to the underlying table and make sure all cells have data in it again before you edit.

Tim Cahill · 05/12/20

This is killing me. I am just grateful it wasn't just me. Not that i wish this frustration on anyone...

Jon Bell · 12/06/20

Appreciating that this thread has gone quiet for 7 months, it still seems to be an underlaying issue with SmartSheet?...

Even if you set-up your dashboard charts with your chosen colours using a full set of 'dummy' data, the issue remains of the chart colours changing when any of the fields subsequently have a 'null' value.

Although not pretty, I can see that using a '0.0001' approach (as described above) works if you're using 'SUM' formulas, but my charts are using 'COUNT' formulas... so only work with whole numbers (something's either there or it isn't!)...

Does anyone have any workarounds for this scenario?

Thanks!

Paul Newcome · 12/07/20

@Jon Bell You should still be able to use the "+0.0001" approach with a COUNT formula.

Emilio Wright · 12/31/21

I have tried looking for other solutions but it seems this is still an issue and there are no other solutions. The issue that I am still facing is that I am using a Report with Groups and Summary. Since the columns that I am including in the Report are text columns, I am not sure how I would add the .000001 to the count in this report. If anyone could provide an idea, that would be greatly appreciated. The Dashboard might require that we access it a few times a week.

I have also noticed that the provided solution to this post is not working for me. Even if I don't access the edit mode, only using the Publish link, the colors still change.

Paul Newcome · 01/03/22

@Emilio Wright I would suggest creating a metrics sheet with cross sheet references that will calculate your totals. Then you would be able to add the 0.00001 to the end of your counts.

Emilio Wright · 01/04/22

https://community.smartsheet.com/discussion/comment/314652#Comment_314652

Thank you Paul. That is exactly what I ended up doing before you commented, and it worked, I just don't like the look of it. So I just stuck to showing Metrics for these values.

Baljé · 05/05/22

@Support Why isn't there a fix for this (in stead of a workaround which only works with a sheet, and not with the improved reports). Very frustrating.

The report doesn't hold all possible values. A simple fix could be that you can add specific labels (correct spelling) with a fixed color to a widget. With a fallback that if there is nothin specifed, the color will change to whatever color is the next in line.

mmuncey · 07/12/22

Totally agree - this has been out there for over two years now with still no fix. The workarounds are not reasonable for our situation, as we have a semicircle chart pulling from a report with summary and groupings, which is in turn pulling from a sheet that multiple people update daily. Adding random data to "fix" a bug is highly inefficient and somewhat silly to boot.

mmuir · 01/26/23

Has this been logged in for an enhancement yet?

Paul Newcome · 01/26/23

@mmuir Here is where you can take a look:

https://community.smartsheet.com/categories/smartsheet-product-feedback-%26-ideas

Chart Colors

Answers

Categories