Excel Services and Chart Web Part Error

SharePoint 2010 Enterprise Edition

 

 

“An unexpected error has occurred.”

 

Here’s a great error message from the SharePoint 2010 Chart Web Part when attempting to connect to an Excel Services published workbook:

To add to the fun, the correlation ID does not show up in my Event log or the SharePoint logs.

 

Here’s the steps to reproduce:

1. Create an Excel file
2. Publish it to a library
3. Add a Chart Web Part to a page
4. Click Data and Appearance
5. Click Connect Chart To Data
6. Click Connect to Excel Services
7. Enter the path to the published file and the range of cells to use
   
8. Click Next
9. ERROR!

The problem?

The chart required each column to have a heading. My Excel file did not have a heading in A1:

The fix? 

Type something in cell A1… I.e. add a heading for each column:

 

Looks like a great opportunity for a better error message!

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