Unique data per record in mail merge chart

[aplarsen]

Experienced Mail Merge and VBA user.

I need to make a graph per record where 3 data points are the same but the 4th is unique to that record. It's a column graph showing student performance on a test with school, district, and state averages for comparison. Everything else about the score report is easy with a normal Mail Merge. That one per-record score is where I am stuck.



I have two thoughts...write the macro to go from a template and essentially copy-paste that template into new pages for each record, then edit the source data to change that one cell for each student. This is kind of a poor man's Mail Merge. I see that there are methods for interacting with the chart object, but I can't find one for editing the source data. I also can't find a way to specify literal data as the source. It only seems to want a string that is an Excel-type reference.

The other thought would be to still do a Mail Merge, but then have a macro go back through all of the charts and again edit the source data in the embedded Excel-like table.

Does one seem easier than the other? The trouble I'm really having is that recording a macro isn't an option, which is my usual MO. When a macro is recording, it's not possible to interact with the chart objects via the mouse. Letting MS write that VBA so I can edit it is how I usually get started, since I generally know what I want to do but don't know the methods and properties to edit without reading lots of docs.