Histogram and heat matrix animation

You might want to play through the values of your quantitative or temporal data, for example to see what activity occurred over a time period and how the chart changed over that time. You can play through the values by animating histograms and heat matrices.

You animate heat matrices and histograms in the Histograms window. To run an animation, select the bars or heat matrix cells of interest and click Play. When animation mode runs, the Play button changes to Pause. Click Pause to stop the animation.

Two animation modes, move and expand, are available to select from the list at the upper left of the histogram or heat matrix. You can choose to run the animation forwards or backwards.
Option Description
Move Forwards Use the selected bars or heat map cells as the starting point and move the selection across the x-axis. This action is the equivalent of selecting each bar or cell in turn. When the animation reaches the end of the sequence, it repeats from the selected starting point until you click Pause.
Move Backwards Run the move animation in reverse from the selected starting point.
Expand Forwards Use the selected bars or heat map cells as a starting point and expand the selection from there across the x-axis. This action is the equivalent of adding each bar in turn to the previous selection. When the animation reaches the end of the sequence, the selected items are cleared and the animation repeats from the selected starting point, until you click Pause. If you expand forwards from a bar or cell not at the beginning, all bars are added from that point until the end.
Expand Backwards Run the expand animation in reverse from the selected starting point.
Note: You cannot expand forwards from the last bar or cell, and you cannot expand backwards from the first bar or cell.

By default, the animation ignores empty columns. To include empty columns in the animation, on the Options page of the Bar Charts and Histograms pane, select the Include Empty Columns check box under Histogram Animation.

Tip: Select a bar, heat matrix cell, or range of bars and cells and use the Left or Right arrow keys to move manually through a histogram.