Show a chart with very high and very low values

Question

I have a bar chart that shows sales against targets for categories as percentages of the targets.

The problem I have is that sometimes one or two of the categories will overperform making the chart hard to read.

Capping the Y axis at 200% has been deemed unacceptable as the usres want to see the top of the bar.

The users have asked if it is possible to crop a section out of the middle, so you would see 0% - 150%, then a gap then (top of high bar - 10%)% to (top of high bar + 10%)%. I dont think this can be done using the built in chart control.

Does anyone have any ideas of a good way to handle this situation?

Answer 1

Check out scale breaks:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb934379(v=sql.100).aspx

No guarantee it will work as hoped with your data, but a good place to start.