Share
I have been wanting an ipod for almost two and half years now. Somehow the need vanished after I got my Walkman phone. Even then I came close to buying one at several occasions during my duty free shopping spree. I almost paid with traveler checks for an ipod at Changi airport sometime back. Somehow I held the temptation back when I heard the exchange rate.
Well, no more wait, I purchased this beautiful 4 gig nano day before yesterday from walmart. 🙂
Share this tip with your colleagues
Simple, fun and useful emails, once per week.
Learn & be awesome.
Thank you so much for visiting. My aim is to make you awesome in Excel & Power BI. I do this by sharing videos, tips, examples and downloads on this website. There are more than 1,000 pages with all things Excel, Power BI, Dashboards & VBA here. Go ahead and spend few minutes to be AWESOME. Read my story • FREE Excel tips book
From simple to complex, there is a formula for every occasion. Check out the list now.
Calendars, invoices, trackers and much more. All free, fun and fantastic.
Power Query, Data model, DAX, Filters, Slicers, Conditional formats and beautiful charts. It's all here.
Still on fence about Power BI? In this getting started guide, learn what is Power BI, how to get it and how to create your first report from scratch.
Here is a fabulous New Year gift to you. A free 2025 Calendar Excel Template with built-in Activity planner. This is a fully dynamic and 100% customizable Excel calendar for 2025.
9 Responses to “Show forecast values in a different color with this simple trick [charting]”
While this works in a pinch, it clearly "lightens" the colors of the entire chart. Depending on where you use this, it will be blatantly obvious that you don't know what you are doing and present a poor looking graph.
Why not separate the data into different segments when charting and have as many colors as you have data points? You might have to create a new legend and/or repeat the chart in "invisible ink", but it would be cleaner and more consistent when new or updated data becomes available.
While I think I agree that doing it "properly" via a second series is preferable, I don't necessarily agree that making the entirety of the "future" (data, gridlines, and even the axis) semi-transparent is "poor looking". I think it could be seen as adding more emphasis to the "future-ness" of the forecast data.
In short, it's another tool for the toolbox, even if it's never needed.
Simply and clever 🙂
Quick & effective, cool. thanks.
I always use the dummy series.
Nice little trick, thanks very much!
Two sets of data better. Control is much better.
You can use the same chart next month to see what is actual and what is forecast.
To use this trick, I think grid lines has to be removed, that will make the graphic much more sharp.
to be honest, i dont understand why there is needed to do this way... in this case horizontal lines will be pale as well. then why a just can't change the color of the line partly???
Great tutorial. Thanks for the tutorial!