My Friend and long time Microsoft Excel MVP, Jon Peltier has released a wonderful little excel charting utility called Cluster Stack Chart Utility.
Although my work rarely involves constructing clustered stack charts, out of curiosity I have mailed Jon and asked him if he could send me a copy of it so that I can review the product and recommend it to PHD reader community. He is kind enough to mail the add-in to me and here goes my review of the tool.
First the Basics: What is a cluster stack chart?
A cluster stack chart is a stacked column chart that also has clusters. It is an ideal type of chart to show performance of multiple products over last few quarters (years) in several regions. A very common need if you are doing sales reporting. Here are few more situations where you would need cluster stack chart:
- Efforts across various activities in each of your projects for the last few years
- Department-wise employee count in each of the branches in the last few years
- Profits for each of the products in each of the regions in the last few years
Ok, how do you make cluster stack chart in Microsoft Excel?
You can make a cluster stack chart in excel by massaging your data. Assuming you have fictitious data like this:
You can make a cluster stack chart by dividing the data in multiple series with few blank values and then plotting a regular stacked column chart. Check out the entire process on Jon’s site itself.
But, I can assure you that it is a very lengthy process and repeating it whenever you need a cluster stack chart is going to be painful. And that brings us to,
Why and what is PTS Cluster Stack Chart Utility?
It is an excel add-in that sits tight in your menu (and has its own toolbar too). To generate a cluster stack chart, all you need to do is, select your data and click on the “Clustered Stacked Chart” from either PTS Charts Menu or the PTS Charts Toolbar.
The data entry dialog looks something like this:
All you need to do is, select the data, specify how many stacks you want and tell it how many items are there in each of the stacks. When you are done, click “OK” and it creates a new sheet with your data neatly arranged in a table form (that is required for generating a clustered stacked chart) and creates a clustered stacked chart for you.
What are my impressions on this utility?
Clustered stacked charts are one of the popular charts used by lots of business users and it is strange that these are not included as part of default chart package in MS Excel (and other professional spreadsheet tools). Still, you can make them, thanks to techniques provided by Jon himself. But not without lot of manual steps. And that is where the clustered stacked chart utility can help you.
The tool comes with simple yet really useful help documentation. You can checkout the cluster stack chart documentation online if you are looking for a step by step tutorial on using the cluster stack utility.
The only gripe I have about the tool is that it uses default formatting. So if you have the excel 2003”s default color scheme, this is how your charts will look when you use the tool:
But as I pointed out, you can easily correct that using formatting of your choice without breaking the functionality and it just takes few clicks.
Should you buy the cluster stack chart utility ?
The utility is priced at $ 29 but you must buy before Feb 15, so click here (after Feb 15 the price becomes $ 39). Even if you make 2 cluster stack charts per year, you could easily save 1 hour using PTS utility and that means, you have easily extracted more than your money’s worth using this little tool.
This is a very good tool for people in finance, marketing or management positions who need to constantly make cluster stack charts using excel. Also, this tool can be a very effective way to make cluster stack charts if you ever need one for your website or project report.
So what are you waiting for? Just head over to PTS Chart utilities page and buy the cluster stack chart utility. While you are there check out the other charting utilities he has: waterfall chart and box & whisker plot utility.
PS: I have used my affiliate code to recommend this product because I think the cluster stack utility totally kicks ass. Even if I had no affiliate code, I would have recommended it, because this is a wonderful tool and Jon is an awesome person who likes to help others and I would like to help him in return by recommending his utility. So go ahead and buy it now, because the price goes up after Feb 15.
28 Responses to “Pimp your comment boxes [because it is Friday]”
This borders on Excel soft-cell...er, soft-core...porn. My favorite kind.
Wow, that is pimp-TASTIC! I have a question, as a VBA n00b: additional comment boxes stay plain unless I "run" the macro. Is there a way to change all comments, going-forward?
hi Chandoo, well, I like the macro approach. For those who don't like it, there is another way: just add the "draw" toolbar to the shapes toolbar (via Custom etc), click on "edit comment", click on the auto-shape and then choose "draw" drop-down, --> modify auto-shape --> then you even can have a heart or a banner (I like the horizontal banner in in purple :-)) . in excel 2007, you have to add this custom menu that you choose via Excel Options --> Custom --> it is called "change/ modify auto-shape"!!!
best,
@Chandoo. Great Post 🙂
@Tim : the way the macro is coded, it must be run very time.
@Community: If someone has an idea to perform it when opening an existing excel, it should be nice.
@Community: if someone has some code to revamp the commentboxes on all sheets, please share it. 🙂
@Microsoft Excel-progammers: some pimpoptions for the commentboxes should be great.
Cheerio
Tom
For the auto run, please add the codes in workbook:
Private Sub Workbook_SheetActivate(ByVal Sh As Object)
Call Comments_Tom
End Sub
Wow, that was a lot of fun... Thanks Tom!
@Jeff... Now, 5000 people know about your favorite porn... 😛
@Tim ... you can write an event to handle the new comments. I wouldnt recommend it as it is really painful. another option is to use the macro suggested by Yukikomi. It will update comments everytime you activate the sheet.
@laguerriere: very cool 🙂
@Chandoo ... Thanks! This is good stuff. I combined your tip with a tip from Mark O'Brien, then assigned it to a button on Excel 2010's Quick Access Toolbar, to format comments AS I add them. I also like how Mark's code saves me the trouble of backspacing my name out of new comments:
Sub AppendToExistingComment()
'Source: Mark O'Brien at http://www.mrexcel.com/forum/showthread.php?t=57296
Dim oRange As Range
Dim oComment As Comment
Dim sText As String
'Use object variable to hold range.
Set oRange = ActiveCell
'Use object variable for comment
Set oComment = oRange.Comment
'text to be added to the comment box
sText = InputBox("Type text to be added:", "APPEND TO COMMENT TEXT")
If Len(sText) = 0 Then End
'If Active Cell has a comment then append new text to the end of the comment text
If Not oComment Is Nothing Then
sText = oComment.Text & vbNewLine & sText
oRange.Comment.Delete
End If
'Add a comment with the contents of sText
oRange.AddComment sText
DoEvents
Comments_Tom
End Sub
Thank you very much for the code, it seems to be working for the most part; I am having a problem however. Once the routine makes the corrections to the comment, the comment becomes invisible. By invisible, I mean that when I highlight my mouse over it, nothing appears. However, when I right click the cell and click 'edit comment' then the comment becomes visible and I enter edit mode. Upon clicking out of the comment, it simply vanishes again. I've tried to fix this problem by adding a .shape.visible = msoTrue but then every comment is always visible. o_O please advise...
Thank you,
Nick
@Nick- That is because the font color of the comment is white and when you select the color of selection is also white hence you can not see anything. Try to change the color code in the routine to something else. would work
Thanks for that! The code works perfectly!
[...] look at Format Excel Comment Boxes using VBA Macros | Chandoo.org - Learn Microsoft Excel Online [...]
@ Chandoo - code works great and the comments look super cool. But I have ran into a small issue. In the comments, I am inserting pictures. When I run the macro, for all comments which already have pictures; pictures are deleted. Pls help me retain the pics in comments.
[…] posted some code one of his readers submitted, it "pimps" your comment boxes from those boring black-text-on-yellow rectangles to something more professional and eye-pleasing. […]
love in it
Hi Tom,
This looks really excellent. I am however relatively new to macros / VBA codes so having copy pasted your code in the Developer mode of an Excel file, what are the next steps to use them? Can you please help? Just to recap, I opened a blank Excel workbook, clicked on Developer, copy pasted the comments code and saved the file to the desktop.
Now how do I go about using it to add comments to an existing file? My apologies for asking a question which may be basic to you great geniuses, but I am not there yet and aspire to get there.
Many thanks for helping me with next steps that I need to take so that I can now use the code.
Best Wishes
Deepak Dave, CMA, MBA, PMP
Senior Management Consultant
Dear Dave,
The best thing to do is to copy the macro in the personal.xls(x) file. The personal excel file will always be launched when you open excel so you can use it with every excelworkbook.
Read all about it on the page of Microsoft.
https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Copy-your-macros-to-a-Personal-Macro-Workbook-aa439b90-f836-4381-97f0-6e4c3f5ee566
Once you have the macro in the personal, you can 'call' the macro by the keyboardcombination 'alt+f8' and klik on the macroname.
Hope this clarifies the 'how to'. Good luck with your first steps in the wonderfull world of macro's.
Tom
Hi Tom,
Many thanks. I will try that out. Learning is fun and learning this stuff is even more amazing.
Best Wishes
Deepak Dave
There is a line 'Dim LArea As Long' which does not appear to be used. Have I missed something?
Dear Gary,
Correct the 'Dim LArea As Long' is indeed not relevant and can be deleted.
Tom
Excellent hack!
For some reason when I opened my file after using LibreOffice Calc, all comment boxes had changed to some arrow shape.
So this macro helped me from manually changing more than 5000 comments in a worksheet, or having to install some Excel extension.
I used it with the following attributes to get back old style comments:
It helped me from manually changing more than 5000 comments in a worksheet, or having to install some Excel extension.
.Shape.AutoShapeType = msoShapeRectangle
.Shape.TextFrame.Characters.Font.Name = "Calibri"
.Shape.TextFrame.Characters.Font.Size = 10
.Shape.TextFrame.AutoMargins = True
.Shape.TextFrame.AutoSize = True
Thanks a lot!
This was helpful, thank you
I think this is among the most significant
information for me. And i am glad reading your article.
But wanna remark on some general things, The site style is great,
the articles is really great : D. Good job, cheers
Is there code to add to this that will format a particular part of the comment (i.e. make the last sentence in the comment bold and in italics)?
This is fantastic!
How would I add auto-sizing to it?
I tried adding this:
.Shape.AutoSize = True but it gives me an error and as a novice at VBA I can't figure it out.
.Shape.TextFrame.AutoSize = True
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This is GREAT!
How should the code be changed in order to tun once for all worksheets in a workbook?