How to change sort order of axis on Chart Web Part?

Question

I have a Chart Web Part that is connected to a SharePoint list. I modified the All Items default view of the list so that it would be sorted correctly but the Chart Web Part does not pickup on the sort order. I've also looked through all of the properties of the Chart Web Part and cannot figure out how to set a sort order.

For example, my list looks something like this:

Name      Value
Bob       9
Jim       6
Sally     4
Richard   3

Yet the X axis of the bar chart is ordered like Sally, Jim, Richard, Bob even though the list's sort order is based on the number value.

How do you edit the sort order of the X axis of a Chart Web Part based on the Y axis value?

Answer 1

Microsoft was able to reproduce the issue; there's no way to alter the sort order of a chart that is connected to a list. A chart connected to a SP list will always return the data in the order the data was originally put into the list so there's no way to change the order after the fact. They say it's "by design" I say it's a bug. Oh well.

It works when connecting to an Excel worksheet through Excel Services. If the sort order is changed on the sheet it is immediately reflected in the chart. I moved the data to Excel and am happy.

Answer 2

I ran into this same issue. The way I got around it is by placing a list view webpart on the page. Then I connected the Chart Webpart's datasource to a webpart on the page. Additionally you can use views/filters on the listview webpart to control what data is included on the Chart.