Stephen L. Nelson, CPA asked:


Many of the financial reports that Money produces can also be shown in a chart or graph format. Sometimes, Money will by default produce a graphical version of a report.

However, you can also create a graphical version of a report—a chart, in other words— by using the chart buttons, which appear in the bottom left corner of any report.

For example, if you’ve just produced a Microsoft Money Where The Money Goes report and you look in the lower left corner of the report, you will see buttons that resemble charts and graphs. The button that is

second from the left might show a bar chart. The button that is third from the left might show a line chart. The button that is fourth from the left might show a pie chart, and so forth.

Producing a Chart or Graph

You can use these buttons to regenerate a report as a graph. Predictably, the bar chart

button produces the equivalent bar chart version of a report. The line chart button

produces the line chart version of a report, and the pie chart button produces the pie chart version of a report.

NOTE The far left button in the lower left corner of the report window is the Report

button. Click it to regenerate the Money report into the traditional tabular report format.

Print a paper copy of chart

You can print the chart shown in the Money Chart Or Report window simply

by choosing the File menu’s Print command. Money then displays either the Print

Report dialog box or the Print Chart dialog box. To print the chart, use the dialog box to indicate how many copies of the chart you want and at what print quality you want the chart produced. Then click the OK button.

In some cases, Money also allows you to specify whether you want to print all the pages or only a range of pages.

After you click the OK button, Money sends a copy of the report to your printer and
directs your printer to produce the report.

Customizing a Chart Using the Chart Tab

At the top of every chart or report window is a Customize button. If you click the Customize button, Microsoft Money displays the Customize dialog box. You click its Chart tab to make changes to a chart.

The Chart tab provides a series of option buttons you can use to customize the

appearance of a chart. The View As option buttons, for example, let you specify whether the information shown in the window should appear as a report, a line chart, a pie chart, or a bar chart. The Pie Labels option buttons, which are available only for pie charts, let you specify whether Money should display percentages

or dollar amounts next to the slices it creates. Beneath these two sets of option buttons, Money displays check boxes that let you indicate whether it should show a three-dimensional version of the chart and whether or not Money should include gridlines. The Show Legend box lets you select the location for the chart legend.