Illume can produce charts to display query results for any question that has a scale. These charts can be dragged and dropped into other common applications, such as Microsoft Word and PowerPoint.
To view charts:
- Create and execute a query; or click on any existing query in the left navigation bar.
- Click the chart icon
under any question name on the summary results page to view a chart displaying the query results for that question. (The chart icon appears only for questions that have a scale. Illume does not produce charts for questions with open-ended responses because the number of potential responses is too large to display in a single chart.)
The chart appears in a new window that includes customizable chart properties and a summary of information in addition to the chart itself.
Customizing the Appearance of the Chart
To alter the appearance of the chart, set any of the properties at the top of the chart page and click Redraw.
The chart page provides the following configurable properties:
- Height The height of the chart, in pixels.
- Width The width of the chart, in pixels.
- Type The type of chart to display.
- Data This determines whether the chart displays raw counts of answers or percentages.
- Theme This controls the chart’s color scheme.
- Include title If this is checked, the chart will include the text in the box to the right as the title of the chart.This is useful if you will be dragging the chart into another application.
- Include subtitle If this is checked, the chart will include the text in the box to the right as the subtitle of the chart.
- Show Scale Values – Check this option to display scale values along the X-axis of bar and line charts, or in the legend of pie charts. This setting does not apply to box and whisker charts.
- Show Scale Labels – Check this option to display scale value labels along the X-axis of bar and line charts, or in the legend of pie charts. This setting does not apply to box and whisker charts.
- Max Label Length – Enter a whole number to specify the maximum number of characters that should appear for scale value labels in the chart. This setting applies only if Show Scale Labels is checked. Illume truncates the scale value label at the number of characters you specify. You may want to limit scale value label length when the labels take up too much space, or are so long that they can only be rendered in a tiny font.
- Use fill patterns When this is checked, the chart uses patterns rather than colors as the primary means of distinguishing segments of the data. This option applies mainly to pie charts.
- Include Filters – Check this option to include a description of the query filters in the chart. You may want to do this if you are dragging the chart into another application such as PowerPoint.
Exporting Charts into Other Applications
To export a chart into another application, simply drag the chart from your browser window into an open document belonging to the other application. Most Windows applications that support Drag and Drop and PNG image files will receive the chart.
When exporting, it’s often useful to include a title and subtitle within the chart itself. You can customize these properties using the Include title/subtitle fields in the Chart Properties section at top of the page.
You can also drag the tables of data below the chart into applications such as Word and PowerPoint:
- Move the mouse pointer to a point just below the chart image.
- Click and drag the mouse to the bottom of the page. The data tables should now have a dark background, indicating they are selected.
- Drag the data tables into Microsoft Word or PowerPoint.
The tables will appear in the Word/PowerPoint document, retaining most of their formatting.
Known Issues with Dragging and Dropping
Microsoft Word may make slight alterations to the appearance of data tables.
Microsoft PowerPoint may split nested tables into several separate tables. You can position the separate tables independently, or you can select them all at once and move them as a group.
To select all of the tables at once within PowerPoint:
- Move the mouse to a position above and to the left of all of the tables.
- Click and drag the mouse to a point below and to the right of all of the tables. You’ll see that all of the tables now have borders around them.
- Click on any of the table borders, hold the mouse button down, and drag the table wherever you want it to go. All of the other tables will move with the table you’re dragging.