Grid lines provide great help in understanding values in a chart. Here is a handy trick you can use in the next bar chart to spice it up.
Here is how you can get this type of chart (we will call it a brick chart)
- First we will make a regular bar chart
- Now, let us assume we want each brick to be of 5 units width. So we take another column in the worksheet and enter the value 1 twenty times. This will be a dummy series that we will add to the chart. Just copy these 20 cells and paste them in to the chart. (just press ctrl+c after selecting the dummy value cells, and then select the chart you made in step 1 and press ctrl+v)
- Now we will change the dummy series’ chart type from bar chart to column chart. Just select the newly inserted series in the chart and right click and select chart type. In the chart type dialog, change the type.
- Now the new chart will look like this. We will adjust the secondary axis parameters so that the columns will span the entire height of the chart. Just use the format axis dialog for this.
- Once the columns are of sufficient height, we will adjust their fill color to transparent (none) and line color to white. This will produce the following effect.
- Finally, remove the unnecessary chart junk like axes and you have a neat looking brick chart.
Download the excel brick chart template and play with it.
PS: making this type of charts is slightly difficult compared to normal charts. What we have done here is, we mixed two types of charts. These are called combination charts. We will explore more about this type of charts later.
17 Responses to “Custom Number Formats – Colors”
You are right, Chandoo. I was playing with the colour numbers last week and some of them don't appear different from each other. Others are totally different from yours.
@Duncan
Each version of Excel, post 2003, renders colors slightly differently
Different language versions may also have different default color palettes
Hello in french
excel 2010
colo1 = couleur1 = black
[couleur1]; [couleur2]; etc..
@Hui, thank you very much again for this great post.
However - under Excel 2007, Hungarian version your solution does not work with color names. I've tried both English and Hungarian names, but drops an error message "not valid formats"
Do you have any idea how to solve this issue?
thanks in advance
@Andras
Without a Hungarian version of Excel 2003 I don't think I can assist
Have you tried using the colour numbers? I couldn't get the names to work (despite using an english version of excel). but it did work with the numbers though. I left out the "u" and was easily able to produce burgundy using [color9]
Here a possible solution: find an English version of Excel, write there the formats using English names, then open the file in the Hungarian version and see the translation.
In Excel 2007 I can't get the colour names to work e.g Sea Green but the numbers do e.g color3 - colour3 does not work so I must bow to the country that has stolen my language (ha ha!)
Hey chandoo, nice Tip!
Wouldn't be easier just apply some conditional formatting for negative numbers and another for positive numbers? Or there's some cases that you can't do that?
Unfortunately the TEXT function doesn't color the cell as number formatting does.
Hi Hui,
Great post Sir, love the new way of formatting with color numbers.
I am using 2007, and it leads me to the last color number 56.
Thanks Hui.
[…] explains how to set up custom number formats with a wide array of […]
Thanks Hui - works a treat!
Thank you, very helpful.
Trying to figure out if it is possible to apply color only to a part of the cell?
E.g. I have a value formatted as Accounting with a currency symbol.
Those I find somewhat distracting though necessary. If I could make them less obtrusive by coloring them gray while the number would stay black, that would be great. Tried tinkering with the format string, but didn't get the desired result. Single color for complete cell value works, but coloring just part of it could not be achieved. Maybe somebody managed that?
Exactly what I was looking for - thank you!
colour in the Australian doesn't work - we have to go American and no problem.
I always thought is was 56 colours notice you have 57. Cool.
thanks
Analir Pisani
Customised Microsoft Office Training Specialist
Sydney - Australia
http://www.azsolutions.com.au
Thank You!