Hi,
Normally the problems with charts come from how Excel defines series and categories.
So the first thing would be to define what a "serie" and a "category" is. Categories are what Excel puts into the y-axis, and series are like a z-axis, even when for example in a bar chart they will be charted as adjacent bars instead of in real 3d.
When you define a chart in Excel, it will always try to minimize the number of series. And this means that if you choose a 3rows x 2columns grid to insert a chart, Excel will use the rows for categories, and the columns for series. But if you choose a 2x3 grid, it will choose the opposite.
Try it: Go to Excel, select a 3x2 range and insert a bar chart. Then select a 2x3 and insert another. You'll see the number of series is always 2, and to obtain that result, the first chart uses each column as a series (while charting the values in the rows), and the second uses each row as a series (while charting the values in the columns).
Now, this is normally what you want to do. You normally want to chart the dimension that has more values, and use the dimension with less values as series. But this isn't what happens when you are creating a template.
If you create a template with say 6 columns and 2 rows, Excel will think the data to plot is in the columns, and it will use 2 series, one for each row. But when you run the report, you might have say 600 rows and the same 6 columns, and the report won't work. Exactly the same happens if you are doing a "columnar chart". Excel will probably set your series to be the rows (because in the template you have more rows than columns), but when you run the report, the opposite will be true.
And the last thing to consider is that when you run a report, the categories will expand, but series will be fixed to what they were when you created the chart. This is the way Excel behaves when you insert rows or columns, no new series are added. And it makes sense too.
So if the data isn't expanding when you insertandcopy, the reason is most likely that you have your series defined in that dimension instead of the categories, and series won't expand.
If you right click in the chart, and select "Select data..." you'll see a dialog which has a button: "Switch Row/Column". If you press that button, Excel will swap categories and series. And this is most likely what you need to do. Again, play with this with some 3x2 sample chart, until you get the idea of how it works, since it is a little difficult to explain just with words. If you are doing a "columnar chart", then you need to make sure each series is in a row, and data is in the columns. When you add more columns by InsertingAndCopying columns, the data range will expand, but you will still have the same number of series (one per row).
Columnar charts work fine, I use them myself a lot, and they work just the same as horizontal charts. But you need to:
1)Make sure you get the series to be the rows, by pressing the "Switch row/Columns" button until it is.
2)Leave an empty column, not a row, so the range expands. (In your first point you sepak about having 2 rows first: This isn't needed for a columnar report. For columns, you need to have 2 columns so the range expands.
Please try with this and let me know if you can make it work. If you can't, please send me a small example on what you are doing to
adrian@tmssoftware.com , and I'll take a look on why it isn't working.