In the early 1990s, Microsoft Chart was renamed Microsoft Graph. The main drawback of Microsoft's solution at the time was the need to exit Multiplan and then load Chart to compose and draw a graph, because MS-DOS was not a multitasking operating system. The simple graphs (pies, bars, lines) were drawn on the screen in graphics mode (which was not available on entry level computer models), and could not be printed on some dot matrix devices. Microsoft Chart shared its box design and two-line menu with Multiplan, and could import Multiplan data. The first software sold under the name Microsoft Chart was an attempt from Microsoft to compete with the successful Lotus 1-2-3 by adding a companion to Microsoft Multiplan, the company's spreadsheet in the early 1980s. This product can be used within other products, and is available in the Object menu in the Insert tab in Office Programs. Microsoft Graph still exists for compatibility reasons, but the entry points are removed. Chart layouts can also be customized to highlight various trends in the data. The new engine supports advanced formatting, including 3D rendering, transparencies, and shadows. Office 2007, specifically, Excel 2007 includes a new integrated charting engine and the charts are native to the applications. Office 2003 was the last version to use Microsoft Graph for hosting charts inside Office applications as OLE objects.

Microsoft Graph supports many different types of charts, but its output is dated. The program is available as an OLE application object in Visual Basic. Microsoft Graph (originally known as Microsoft Chart) is an OLE application deployed by Microsoft Office programs such as Excel and Access to create charts and graphs.

For the Microsoft developer service, see Microsoft Graph.

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