Home / Statistical Tools / Control Charts / Moving Range / Task Pane

Task Pane¶

The Control Chart pane is the same on every chart. On a Moving Range sheet it binds to the worksheet named Moving Range Chart.

The Analysis Pane¶

When a control chart has been created, Quantum XL docks a task pane titled "Control Chart" against the right side of the Excel window. There is one control chart pane in the product. Every chart type gets the same pane with the same three sections, Window, Display, and Split Control Limits, so nothing in it is specific to the chart you ran.

Only one analysis pane is shown at a time. The same ribbon button serves the Capability and Histogram pane, and opening one hides the other.

The pane is not a second copy of the chart dialog. It gives you a display window, three display switches, and the manual split editor. Everything else stays in the dialog: the data selection, the limit type, the sigma multiplier, the baseline, the sigma estimation method, the transformation, the historical values, the reference lines, and the individual out-of-control tests.

Opening and closing it¶

The ribbon button is labelled Analysis Pane, in the Statistical Tools group, while the pane itself is titled "Control Chart". They are the same thing under two names.

The pane opens by itself every time an analysis finishes, not only the first time.
Moving to a sheet with no control chart on it does not close the pane. Every section greys out and the pane stays where it is; going back to a chart sheet enables it again.
Once you close the pane, moving to another chart sheet does not bring it back. Reopen it with the Analysis Pane ribbon button, or by running another analysis.

It applies to the worksheet, not to one chart¶

The pane is bound to the active worksheet rather than to a chart you selected. If the worksheet holds several control charts, everything you change in the pane is written to all of them. The pane says so itself: under the sheet name it reports how many control charts it found, and the split section carries a warning line reading "Applies to all charts of this analysis".

Two details are worth knowing:

The number it reports is a count of the hidden data sheets that belong to the worksheet, one per chart, not a count of the chart objects you can see. A chart whose data sheet was never written, or was cleaned up, is not counted, so the number can be lower than the number of charts on the sheet.
The settings the pane displays are read from the first chart on the sheet, while its checkboxes are written to every chart. If the charts on one sheet have been changed individually, the pane shows you one chart's state and applies it to all of them.

Window (pane only)¶

No chart dialog anywhere in Quantum XL has a display window. This section is the only place it can be set.

Start at: the first plotted point shown, counted from 1.
Size: how many points are shown. The box is a drop-down offering 50, 100, 500, and 1000, and you can type any other number into it. A new chart opens showing the last 1000 points, or all of them if there are fewer.
The two Page buttons, one marked with a left arrow and one with a right arrow, move the window back or forward by one full window width.

Start at and Size are applied when you press Enter, press Tab, or click outside the box, so picking a size from the drop-down list takes effect when you leave the box. The Page buttons act on the click. A window that runs past the data is pulled back into range, so paging forward stops at the last point. Changing Size while the window is sitting at the end of the data keeps it at the end; otherwise the starting point is left where it was.

Changing the window redraws the charts over a different range of points. Nothing is recalculated: the control limits, the center lines, and the out-of-control flags were all worked out and stored when the chart was built, so they do not change as you scroll.

Display¶

Show zone lines: the same setting as "Show 1-sigma / 2-sigma zone lines" in the dialog's Display Options group. The zone lines are always built into the chart, so this shows or hides lines that are already there.
Show out-of-control indicators: a coarser version of what the dialog offers. In the dialog you enable the out-of-control tests one at a time; this single checkbox shows or hides the markers for all of them at once. It cannot switch a test back on, because it only filters what the analysis already flagged, so a test the dialog had turned off stays off. To change which tests run, modify the analysis.
Show outlier markers: pane only. No chart dialog has an outlier display option. When it is checked, a point you excluded as an outlier is drawn as a hollow marker so you can pick it out; when it is cleared, that point is drawn filled like any other.

All three take effect the moment you click them, and all three only change how the existing chart is drawn.

To change which out-of-control tests run, rather than just whether their markers are shown, modify the analysis. See Out-of-Control tests.

Split Control Limits¶

This section covers part of what the dialog's Split Control Limits group covers: the manual break points and the phase labels, and nothing else.

Manual Break Rows (1-based, start of split): type the point number at which a new phase begins and choose Add. The row has to be between 1 and the number of plotted points, it cannot repeat a row already in the list, and the pane itself checks only that the break leaves at least two points in a phase. A row that fails one of those checks is refused and the reason is printed in red under the editor.
The effective minimum phase length is whatever the chart's engine requires, which is five points on the variable charts. The pane's own check is the two-point one above, so on a variable chart the pane will accept a break that leaves a phase of two, three, or four points and the engine will then refuse to recompute. Nothing is shown when that happens: the break rows simply return to the ones the chart was built with. Use the minimum stated on the chart's own page, not the pane's, when you place a break.
The list shows the break rows in order. Select one and choose Remove Selected to take it out.
Split Labels: one box per phase, always one more box than there are break rows, shown beside each divider on the chart.

What the pane cannot do is choose or clear splitting by a column. If the analysis was split by a column the whole section greys out and the pane reads "Splits driven by column: column name. Use Modify Analysis to switch to manual breaks." Switching between splitting by a column, splitting at manual break points, and not splitting at all is a dialog decision.

If the pane cannot find the stored settings for the chart it reads "No analysis settings found for this chart." and the section stays disabled.

Apply Splits (pane only)¶

Break rows and labels do nothing until you choose Apply Splits, and the button stays disabled until they differ from what the chart was built with. It is the only action in the pane that can change a number on the chart; everything else just redraws what is there.

Apply Splits re-reads the source data, runs the entire analysis again, and rebuilds the analysis worksheets rather than editing them. Expect it to take about as long as creating the chart did.

Splitting is not allowed on every analysis. If the analysis rules it out, for example when you entered manual control limits, or combined a transformation with a capability analysis, the recompute is rejected and the pane goes back to the break rows the chart already had.

Apply Splits clears Excel's undo history

Because it deletes and rebuilds the analysis worksheets, Apply Splits clears the undo history for the whole workbook, so edits you made before pressing it cannot be undone either. Save the workbook first.

Apply Splits is rejected when the chart was built with manual limits, or with a transformation and a specification limit together. Both are the combinations the dialog already refuses to split.

It is saved with the workbook¶

Every pane setting is stored in the workbook: the display window, the three display switches, and the break rows with their labels. The pane itself does not reopen when the workbook does; open it with the Analysis Pane ribbon button.