Hi,

I don't think you can stop Excel from creating and populating a chart by
using the current area.

You can restricted it, as you say, by selecting an empty.
You can also select more than 1 cell, even in the middle of a area of
data, and the chart will be based on that. Not exactly what you wanted
by it should save time rather than waiting seconds, minutes even, for
the chart to draw. Of course the real problem is remembering to select
an empty or a few cells.

Cheers
Andy

Kevin wrote:
I'm having difficulties making graphs in 2007, mainly because when i hit the
insert graph button excel says "i'll take it from here" and proceeds to make
a graph of damn near the whole sheet which may contain 30-40 thousand data
pairs. Is there no way to go back to the old wizard that let YOU pick what
data you want to graph rather than Mr. Gates? I know that i can click on a
location in the sheet where there's no data anywhere near it and it'll just
open an empty plot but that shouldn't be the only way.

--

Andy Pope, Microsoft MVP - Excel
http://www.andypope.info