Is there any reasonable workaround for including more than 255 data series in
an Excel chart? Ideally, I need to be able to show over 1000 data series in
a chart.

Now, I know that you might question the legibility of a chart with that many
data series, so here is a chart with 255 data series:
http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/d...from-excel.gif

This chart shows time series data for a person working on a problem and the
problem-solving stages they engage in during the process. It's basically 8
parallel timelines. I have written a macro that generates the timeline by
using essentially floating columns. However, this requires a large number of
data series to display the entire timeline... hence my question.

Altogether, the choice of 255 series seems arbitrary. While having an upper
limit theoretically prevents people from making bad charts, I've seen plenty
of bad charts with only 5 series.

kate