ODS Excel - chart from excel template

[KonstantinVasil]

I have a large excel report which I try to automate by producing it with SAS and ODS Excel. The report contains several tables with specific formatting which I create successfully. 

In addition, there are combo charts which are linked to some of the data and have specific excel formatting for the lines/bars/axis. I am looking for a solution to reproduce these charts from SAS and then write them to excel file. They need to have the same formatting as the original excel file and be referencing to the data which is already written to the excel cells.

I am thinking of two possible solutions:

1. reproduce the charts with sgplot and then try to match the formatting
2. export the chart data into excel and then link it to a custom excel chart template - ".crtx" file - Can this be done from SAS?

Any possible solutions, comments and references would be highly appreciated!

[RW9]

Just choose one or the other.  If you have to use Excel, then create a template in Excel, create VBA macros to load the data into your template from CSV files.  Then all your SAS has to do is drop out the data to CSV.  Alternatively use SAS for all of it, produce a report with the various items, excluding Excel functionality.  There really is no benefit to try to drive software x from software y.