Sales funnel is a very common business chart. Here is a simple bar chart based trick you can use to generate a good funnel chart to be included in that project report.
Download the Sales Funnel Chart – Excel Template and learn it by playing with it.
1. Get your sales data ready
The first step is to get your sales data ready for a funnel chart.
For this we take a normal phase-wise sales data and add a dummy series to it. The dummy values tell excel how far each of the sales figures should be moved away from y-axis to get the funnel effect.
The dummy values are calculated using a simple formula like =(some_large_number – funnel_size_at_that_phase)/2, In our case, I have used 150,000 for the large number.
We will also add a total column.
Tell me again, why are we using dummy series?
In order to create the funnel effect, we must move each of the bars in such way that they are all centered vertically. To do this, we take a large number and subtract funnel value from that and divide this by two. How it works ? well, that you can figure out while sipping coffee 😀
2. Create a simple bar chart with the columns Total and Dummy
Once you are done, the bar chart should look like this.
3. Now adjust bar overlap and gap width settings to create a funnel effect
Select the bars by clicking on them, and right click and go to format data-series. In the resulting dialog, go to options and adjust “series overlap” and “gap width” settings in such way that series are completely overlapped and gap is ZERO.
Once you do this, the chart should look like this.
4. Adjust colors and add labels
Select the dummy series and fill it with white color or make it transparent. Add data labels and you have a sparkling funnel chart ready.
Next time use this in your sales presentation to the boss and see everyone having a discussion.
Download the Sales Funnel Chart – Excel Template and learn it by playing with it.
8 Responses to “Top 5 keyboard shortcuts for Excel Charts”
As far as I remember (checked, again, 2 minutes ago) in my "Excel 2013" in order to select various chart elements I need to use the Arrow keys and not the TAB key.
Practically, the TAB key does nothing (within a Chart).
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Michael (Micky) Avidan
Thanks for pointing this out. This is how I remember it too, but when I was recording the video yesterday, only TAB key worked. MS must have changed the keys in Excel 2016. I have edited the post to include both keys.
The key navigation on charts is different in 2016.
TAB cycles through a layer of objects (SHIFT+TAB cycles backwards)
ENTER move down a layer
ESC moves up a layer
So on a column chart with title/legend/data labels if you select the plotarea the TAB will go through Title > Legend > Plotarea.
ENTER at plotarea will then select Vertical axis. Tab will take you through
Horizontal axis > gridlines > Series > Horizontal Axis.
ENTER with series selected will then allow you to TAB through individual data points and data labels.
If you ENTER on datalabels you can TAB through each data label.
ALT + F1 : to create default chart
ALT+E S T = CTRL + ALT + V, T : I find that easier to remember
I second what Michael already said about TAB and arrow keys. I can't help but think if this is related to the "," or ";" as separator. I prefer to use the chart tools - layout- drop down box, anyway.
Got to be F11 for instant charting. Highlight your data , hit F11 and voila! ?
Ctrl+1 is the most important chart shortcut. In fact, it works for any Excel object: whatever is selected, Ctrl+1 opens the task pane or dialog to format that object.
Somewhere along the line, maybe when Excel 2016 came out, the arrow keys stopped working to cycle through the elements of a chart. But what works is holding Ctrl while clicking the arrow keys. I haven't gotten used to the Tab and other keys, but as long as Ctrl+Arrow works, I'm good.
And F4 used to be so helpful when formatting a lot of charts. But since Excel 2007 came out, it has been mostly useless. It used to remember a whole set of changes at once, so I get that the newer modeless dialogs make that impractical. But now it only seems to work with formatting of lines and borders, and maybe fills. I find myself writing a lot of VBA one-liners in the Immediate Window to handle these tedious formatting tasks.
after clicking on a chart, is there a shortcut key to copy it?
Thank you for the Alt E S T - tip. This is more than a time saver. Because of dynamic charts or de-activated external references to data when you make the charts, you often have empty charts that are otherwise impossible to format. So this shortcut helps adressing that. I will work with it more and see if there remain some obstacles.