Improve Graph / Chart tool
Current graph tool in Illustrator has many limitations that need fixing. Following are some of the problems in Graph tool:
- No value labels
- Data window that requires you to remove characters such as commas
- Resetting of chart upon making changes
- Resizing issues (e.g. with bounding box)
- Missing basic chart types like *****
- No support for templates
- Also the tool doesn't support making new chart types, such as attaching data to any attribute of the artwork.

Please share your thoughts on the following:
1. Would it make sense to have a separate desktop app, just to create charts, and bring them inside Illustrator or InDesign? It may not be on cloud.
2. Or would you rather have us work on building it within Illustrator?
Thanks
Yogesh
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Stijn Simoens commented
Datylon is developing a plug-in for Adobe Illustrator to create advanced graphs and charts in a very efficient way. Most of the features asked for in this thread are covered by our plug-in "Datylon Graph". Product Management of Adobe Illustrator is giving us full support in this.
We recently released a stable Beta version and are interested in users who try out our tool and give us feedback. You can download Datylon Graph for free at https://datylon.com/graph.
Don't hesitate! We plan to release a first customer version by end of January2020. -
Anonymous commented
This tool needs a major overhaul. I dread making charts and graphs because they are so tedious and unintuitive. There need to be ways to edit the design and look of a graph prior to ungrouping—and thus, rendering your chart uneditable.
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Kjell Olsson commented
Working with the graphing tools is like digital time-travel. It's frustrating and often forces you to come up with workarounds. It was old-fashioned many years ago. Both interface and functionality is in need of a complete overhaul. I hope it happens before my retirement - in 5-6 years time.
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Chris Voros-Haynes commented
Hello
I would like chart creation and update function including being able to update a link to an Excel file to be either in Indesign or Illustrator please
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Simon commented
Hadn't realized the limitations of this tool until now. I'm unable to align the object with anything or resize by specifying dimensions. It would seem natural to be able to style the graph (a pie in this instance) with the many tools illustrator provides, but the inability to use even the most basic on the graph object is frustrating.
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Anonymous commented
If you're asking it like that, it'll probably be a separate app.
Infographics are marketable, Illustrator is kind of old school.But it'll be definitely better as a part of Illustrator, that's a more natural workflow.
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Ian Aberle commented
This really needs to be kept in Illustrator. I really don't need another tool where I ask, why can't [insert the name of tool here] just do this?!?
Really hope at Adobe MAX 2019, Adobe will announce that Project Lincoln is now part of Illustrator.
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Anonymous commented
Keep the function within Illustrator.
More default colors please! If you insert more than six categories, youll end up with several bars/lines/slices of the same color which makes it really hard changing colors in the next step by marking "same color" or similar. -
Anonymous commented
A preview option would be nice
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Anonymous commented
I agree, I've been using this tool at work for 17 years and it has never been updated. It's so awkward and primitive. My current company is looking at 3rd party software which can seamlessly create editable graphs that don't revert to the basic design and allow you to have more sophisticated looking designs without having to rasterize it and have a separate data graph. So far we haven't found it, but have found a company that is working on developing one.
Adobe, what is the reason for not updating this tool?
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Sam commented
My biggest bugbear is you can’t delete data from the cell window, you can only cut it! Even a simple fix to that would be great.
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Saul commented
This should be a priority. It's incredible how neglected the chart tool has been for soooo many years.
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Lauren commented
I don't care if it's in illustrator or not, but I guess it might be nice to remain inside of it??
My company wastes hundreds of hours building charts/graphs manually in illustrator.
There are no tools on the web I can find either that give us the flexibility we need...it really really sucks.Please make this an issue to look into updating.
I can't even figure out how to make a basic graph with this tool, amazingly archaic. -
Richard de Garis commented
Is anyone at Adobe even bothering to look at this thread?
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Anonymous commented
Of all the improvements and suggestions that have been made for Illustrator the one that I REALLY want is to improve the graph tool. I keep looking for this to make it to the top of the list but still it looks like it never get prioritised. The demonstration of project Lincoln a couple of years back really got me excited but still no progress. Graphs are at least 50% of what I do in Illustrator – so this should be a huge priority. PLEEAAASE!!!
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Jonathan commented
Please update this tool already, this topic is almost 2 years old, and the tool itself must over 2 decades!!
Make this a priority for God's sake! -
Theresa commented
Check out what I just found buried in this article: https://medium.com/adobetech/creative-developers-summit-2019-report-bfbed73561db
"Although it was a bit unorthodox for Creative WOW, there were a couple of sneak peeks from Adobe.
... another Adobe employee gave a sneak peek of Project Lincoln, an app which makes it easy to create infographic charts."So it sounds like "Project Lincoln" is still being developed. So thats pretty cool.
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Anonymous commented
we need a graphing tool in indesign! should not have to color graphs manually, or insert values onto the graphs manually, or create our own keys. once we input the data it should create everything for you. should be built into indesign, not a separate app.
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Ian Aberle commented
There is such a need for infographics and data visualizations right now, I cannot see why this is not more of a priority to the Adobe Illustrator team. I can think of no feature that can use an update in Illustrator more than the chart tool.
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CDJ commented
Back again to voice my vote on the need for Illustrator to provide charting tools.
The best case scenario, from my perspective, is to do both, continue developing Data Illustrator and also update the basic tools in Illustrator.
In Illustrator proper, we NEED to create basic charts using industry standard ways to deal with data, e.g., working with data as it is typically found— in csv, spreadsheets, xml, JSON, etc. From that, we need to create the standard charts and graphs in Illustrator.
A typical workflow is to start in Excel or R studio, generate a chart and bring it into Illustrator. It would be great to be able to stay in Illustrator to do the basics.
Then, Data Illustrator becomes the opportunity to truly innovate visualizing data. While exciting, we need to have the basics first.
Happy to chat about this any time.
Thanks!