Question

I am trying to create horizontal bar chart to look like a pill chart.

I would like to take a either a stacked bar chart or a 100% stacked bar chart and put rounded ends onto this chart. I would only be using 1 row within the chart.

One idea I had was just putting rounded images on either end of the chart to accomplish this but I’m not sure that this will give the smooth feel of a single pill.

Does anyone have a good suggestion?

I am not tied to the idea of using a chart object. But I would prefer to stay away from third party components that need to be purchased.

Answer 1

i’d have to agree with jimconstable on this, in the sense that
‘data honesty’ could be significantly compromised, but if you’re willing to be “off” by the amount that represents the arc, you could add “false” points to the chart, so that a chart with 3 segments becomes one with 5, one with 5 becomes one with 7. If you add two columns to your stored procedure output, one for left end and one for right end, then set the value of the background image in the report designer. You’d also need to accomodate for the fact that the width of the bar would always exceed 100%, so if you made each of the end caps 5%, you would have to make the value each of the “real” data points ([desired value] * .9 ) so that the total of these ‘real’ data points would sum to 90%, plus two end caps at 5% each.
a word of caution though: i was able to talk the client who asked for this out of it by virtue of the inherent innacuracy in the resulting chart, and therefore haven’t tried to do what i’m suggesting to you, so proceed with caution.
it works in theory, but so do lots of other bad ideas