If you can assume the user has Excel installed, Excel Automation is an extremely powerful option, in that anything the user can do interactively, can be automated (AFAIK). Having done some Excel Automation already, I would guess this option is both powerful, and relatively simple.

Having said that, I didn't compare the graphical capabilites of Excel with the other tools you mentioned.

Automation in general is quite easy, but when trying to create graphs, it did look more complicated to me (compared to most other Automation tasks). I guess that requires studying the Excel object model a bit more, to know what is available. The books on Automation should also help you here.

One possibility, that makes things simpler, is to use pre-designed graphs, and just fill in the data - but that doesn't seem practical if you don't know the number of data points in advance, so this trick can be used only in some cases.

>I am looking for recommendations on both the EASIEST and the most POWERFUL way to create chart / graph output from VFP. Right now I don't care about the web. I need to display color 3D bar charts on the screen and print them.
>
>I have been doing web and thread searches. It looks like here are my options:
>
>1) MsGraph
>2) MsChart
>3) Third party tools
>4) FRX2any (looks like it only does 2D charts? - if so can't use it)
>5) Crystal Reports (probably powerful - but I'm not that great with Crystal compared to VFP report writer)
>6)Excel Automation. (Did some word automation about 4 years ago - need to get up to speed on automation again )
>(I will assume office 2000 or higher installed on machines using this application)
>
>Willing to spend money on a third party tool if it will make my life easier
>
>
>We are rewriting an application created by end users in excel. There is already an existing excel sheet that has the graphs I need.
>
>Any suggestions appreciated.
>
>Thanks.