In Petal Charts – an Alternative to Radar Charts I have suggested using a radar chart tweak to replace the radar charts. Both PTSBlog and Information Ocean have posted their critical reviews of these petal charts.
So as a penance for proposing petals, I am going to provide a tutorial on creating a comparison table in Excel for replacing the radar charts. We are going to create a comparison table chart like the one featured on right that is proposed at Information Ocean.
Creating Spot Matrix Charts in Excel in Just 5 Steps
The trick for creating comparison table like the above lies in using a dingbat (symbol) font named “Wingdings 2” that is pre-installed in most of the Windows machines.
- First arrange your data in tabular structure. For eg. let us assume this is the data we are trying compare:
- Now create another identical table. We are going to fill this one with one of the 5 circular symbols :
. 
Next go to an empty cell, lets say C3, and press ALT+I followed by S (Menu > Insert > Symbol). Set the font to “Wingdings 2” and insert these 5 circular symbols to the cell C3.- Now, in the blank table you have created in step 2, let us write formulas to fetch one of the circle symbols based on our data. A sample formula can be like this:
=MID($C$3,FLOOR((data-1)/5,1)+1,1)
Copy paste the formula in the entire table. - Finally, change the font of the new table to “wingdings 2”. Adjust colors / size if needed. When you are done, the comparison chart table should look like:
Download the Spot Matrix Charts Template and Replace your Radars
That is all. How do you like this compared to petals?
11 Responses to “Fix Incorrect Percentages with this Paste-Special Trick”
I've just taught yesterday to a colleague of mine how to convert amounts in local currency into another by pasting special the ROE.
great thing to know !!!
Chandoo - this is such a great trick and helps save time. If you don't use this shortcut, you have to take can create a formula where =(ref cell /100), copy that all the way down, covert it to a percentage and then copy/paste values to the original column. This does it all much faster. Nice job!
I was just asking peers yesterday if anyone know if an easy way to do this, I've been editing each cell and adding a % manually vs setting the cell to Percentage for months and just finally reached my wits end. What perfect timing! Thanks, great tip!
If it's just appearance you care about, another alternative is to use this custom number format:
0"%"
By adding the percent sign in quotes, it gets treated as text and won't do what you warned about here: "You can not just format the cells to % format either, excel shows 23 as 2300% then."
Dear Jon S. You are the reason I love the internet. 3 year old comments making my life easier.
Thank you.
Here is a quicker protocol.
Enter 10000% into the extra cell, copy this cell, select the range you need to convert to percentages, and use paste special > divide. Since the Paste > All option is selected, it not only divides by 10000% (i.e. 100), it also applies the % format to the cells being pasted on.
@Martin: That is another very good use of Divide / Multiply operations.
@Tony, @Jody: Thank you 🙂
@Jon S: Good one...
@Jon... now why didnt I think of that.. Excellent
Thank You so much. it is really helped me.
Big help...Thanks
Thanks. That really saved me a lot of time!
Is Show Formulas is turned on in the Formula Ribbon, it will stay in decimal form until that is turned off. Drove me batty for an hour until I just figured it out.