Yesterday I have learned this cool excel charting trick and I cant wait to share it with you all.
The problem: I have too many charts & want to show one based on selection
You have made 3 charts to show your company performance in the last 8 years. But you don’t want to clutter the project report with all of them. You would rather want to show one chart and let user choose to see the any of the other two, like this:

The Solution: Use INDIRECT() and a nifty image hack
- First, create your charts in a separate worksheet like this (remember you need to create all 3 charts first)

- Once the charts are created adjust the width and heights of 3 cells and place one chart in each like above.
Now, go back to the sheet where you want to control the display, and define a new named range. Lets call it getChart. You can define new named ranges from menu > insert > name > define. You will see a dialog box like this (right):- In the “Refers to:” area we will now write an INDIRECT() spreadsheet formula to refer to one of the 3 cells where charts are placed. A sample formula is below:
IF('View them here'!$C$2="Sales",INDIRECT("'Place your charts here'!F11"),IF('View them here'!$C$2="Expenses",INDIRECT("'Place your charts here'!F12"),INDIRECT("'Place your charts here'!f13"))) - The above formula assumes, you are going to control chart display thru cell C2 in the sheet ‘view them here’
- Now adjust a cell’s size in this spread sheet to be big enough so that we can fit the selected chart.
- Go to Menu > Insert > Picture > From File and insert any picture. This is just for a placeholder purpose, so any picture would do, including that of your cat’s. 🙂
- Finally, select the image and go to formula bar and type
=getChart(or whatever name you gave to the named range), like this:

- Change the value in C2 and see the magic.
How this hack works?
In excel you can assign named ranges to images inserted in the sheet. So when you adjusted the cell sizes in the sheet with charts and created indirect references through INDIRECT() formula and used it in the named range, excel fetched the content of the cell (the chart) and replaced your cat’s picture with that. This powerful little trick can help you make interactive dashboards within little space.
Pretty cool, eh?
Download and see in action
Here is a link to the downloadable conditional chart display workbook. I have tested this in Excel 2003, but I guess it should work the same way in most of the modern versions of excel. Feel free to drop a comment if you see this not working in a particular version.














19 Responses to “Free Invoice Template using Excel – Download”
Nice post! Invoicing for the small biz or solo entrepreneur is something I see a lot of interest in. Also there are great templates from http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/templates
This is awesome.
I would need a little more. e.g. say I generate a Inv. # 1 with all the details. Once done I can click a button all the relevant details gets stored in some table. Further, when i generate a new invoice those details gets stored in same table but just below the previous invoice.
Is their a way to do this?
I did create a solution you are looking for, however its wrapped in a larger 'Medical Scheduler' and it uses VBA, But you can Save, Update, Lookup, Email, Print & Apply Payments to the Invoice.
You are welcome to download it here:https://www.dropbox.com/s/2yvo0o2tgq9quhe/Medical_Massage_and_Salon_Application-Free.xlsm
The Invoice Items are created from the Appt. Types & Service Items table.
I would love all feedback from this
Thank you for sharing. I will definitely have a look at it.
Daily dose of Excel held a competition in 2005 for this same topic
It obtained 9 solutions which are shown:
http://dailydoseofexcel.com/archives/2005/10/27/invoice-app-the-results/
[…] http://chandoo.org/wp/2014/03/19/free-invoice-template/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&a… […]
How can i removed Dollar Sign, As want to use this in india.
Please reply.
Also if possible then can i use Indian Rupee Sign and how?
Hi Chandoo,
Thanks for sharing this invoice template, Let me tell you this template will definitely help me since I got a process to handle where this invoice piece comes. Just a small doubt, can we store all the invoice details in PRODUCT & SERVICES sheet. So that whenever I select an invoice number from invoice sheet I can take print out and I can share it as well. Can we do that?? Since I will be dealing with this on monthly basis.
It would be great if you can help me with this.
Thanks in advance for your help!
Regards,
Gaurang Mhatre
Hi Chandoo,
I was thinking learning excel is quite tuff task but your blog proved me wrong. You made it very interesting. Thank you. Also the template you have provided for Invoice is very helpful to us.
Thanks thanks thanks.. Very helpful. 🙂
Hi i love the speadsheet but would like to ask how do i get it to add the description into the invoice as well
Hi Randy, I tried to download one of your link "https://www.dropbox.com/s/2yvo0o2tgq9quhe/Medical_Massage_and_Salon_Application-Free.xlsm" However, i found the link unavailable. Can you please help me get the new link or can you please send this VBA file on my Email-ID.
Hello Anuj,
Thanks for alerting me to the broken link. This one should work:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/gz89gshex1ad0ex/Medical_Massage_and_Salon_Application-Free.xlsm?dl=0
Please let me know if you have any questions.
Randy
Thank you so much Buddy. will check and revert you soon.
Hi, is there any chance that this can work with the "Products & Service" sheet outside of the Invoice sheet. I create multiple invoice files for the numerous clients. Updating the product sheet for each of them maybe a task. Hence, I want to create a MASTER FILE from which data can be picked up without having to insert new data in each of the invoice files.
Possible? Or am I asking for the moon 😉
Thank you so much for tutorial.
This example can be reviewed for the example of the advanced invoice that made with excel userform :https://youtu.be/Qr-4of-38DI
Good Day
i love this template may i ask if it could be modified to have the following
when you lookup a item code in the next column to the right it brings up the description then the quantity, unit cost, discount and then total otherwise i love the template
Item Code Description Quantity Unit Cost Discount Total
When creating an Invoice template in Excel are you able to utilize the auto row height and wrap feature when the cell is a merged cell? I need to have a number of cells merged together to allow for enough space to type in the description of work performed (lets say cells A-D are merged in each row) however it seems that I am unable to utilize the auto format feature. To work around this I have to manually increase the row height after each entry. Is there a better solution for this? Thank you!