This week we are celebrating Your Week @ PHD. That means you get to read the excel tips shared by other readers of this blog.
Unhide all the sheets using simple macro by Kat
My single favourite simple macro ever – to fill in the gap that Excel leaves. Unhiding -all- hidden tabs in a workbook at once. I install it in the personal.xls workbook, and save myself hours of clicking.
Sub Unhide_All_Sheets() Dim wsSheet As Worksheet For Each wsSheet In ActiveWorkbook.Worksheets wsSheet.Visible = xlSheetVisible Next wsSheet End Sub
A KPI Dashboard using VBA and Charts by David
After learning a whole lot over the past few months from this site and others (so many I can’t even remember right now – but I will make a list soon of where I found things), I constructed a KPI spreadsheet (see link below). This spreadsheet allows our institution to create standardized KPI reports for university consumption.
I attempted to keep the colors muted even though I chose school colors (from the publishing guide) for the actual graph.
Features
The chart is dynamically configured in numerous ways. The user can control the title (via cell entry on left), color of bars (via color of data labels), number format (via number format of the first data cell), and the display and printing of the trend line. The KPI name comes from the sheet, and the vertical axis is determined based on the data (I find the maximum value and divide by 4).
To-dos
I would like the user to be able to enter new descriptive items via a form with the option to include variables (KPI_Name, KPI_Category, etc.). I would like the user to be able to include more than one chart on a page (some KPIs actually need to track parts of the whole).
I am sure there are more features I will think of as time goes on but I wanted to let others see this and hopefully be able to incorporate it into their/your own work. The file is available here: http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/749941/KPIs_PHD.xlsm. Hopefully I will be starting a blog soon to talk more about what we are doing here with excel and other products.
Using Find Dialog to Solve a Tricky Problem by Christy Lee
Introduction:
On a project I recently worked, we crunched several hundred (about 400) rows of data. The creator of the original document did not have any way to foresee the life this project would take on! So…there was only one field for ‘Name’ which contained the names of the team members for the corresponding step of the overall project.
Challenge:
As the project progressed, an individual may be added to multiple task teams. So, your name might be one of three in four records, one of ten in fifteen records, etc. Also, the team members could be added on the fly…you see how the complications arise quickly! Oh, and the project was run on three continents in four countries….
Each person was responsible for updating their pertinent information. Because of the complexity of that one name cell, filtering and sorting became cumbersome.
Solution:
Hide all rows except for the header row.
Do a search on your name (fortunately, in about three dozen team members, we had no duplicate last names!)
When the search results dialog comes up, select all of the records (select first, shift+select last)
Go to Format>Row>Show.
Whoo Hoo! There are all (and ONLY) the records that belong to you.
Array Formulas to the Rescue by Rajinikanth
This is the formula to find out Employees first login time and last logout time for the day.
Example : Suppose employee table is starting form Column B
then the table looks like :
Name Code
1001 rajinikanth
1002 srinivas
1003 vardhan
and the Login Data is starting from Column G in a sheet
Then The formula for First login :
{=1/MAX((B8=$G$7:$G$15)*($H$7:$H$15<>0)*(1/$H$7:$H$15))}
and the formula for Last Logout :
{=MAX(($G$7:$G$15=B7)*($I$7:$I$15))}
A Big Warm Lovely Heartfelt Thank you to Kat, David, Christy and Rajinikanth. You are truly wonderful.
Be a part of the “your week” @ PHD
Come, be part of the your week celebrations at PHD. Click here to submit your excel tips. Your tips will be shared with all our readers during this week (May 11-15, 2009)
PS: If you have already shared your tips and not seeing them in this post, don’t worry. I am posting only a few everyday, so yours will be in the next 3 posts.
25 Responses to “Display Alerts in Dashboards to Grab User Attention [Quick Tip]”
I prefer the red,grey,light grey,black icon set. I've also used in-cell pie charts from Fabrice's Sparklines for Excel as an alert which could also provide another piece of information.
I prefer the red,grey,light grey,black icon set. I've also used in-cell pie charts from Fabrice's Sparklines for Excel as an alert which can also provide another piece of information.
For Excel 2007, your formula should do the same as the Excel 2003 version, so that non-alert rows are blank - if they are 0, the unnecessary green icon will show
Hi Chandoo,
Nice Post !! just to add something for EXL 2003, we can also 4 Ifs and link to the alert data
For Ex: If we have alert data in Cell A2 and want to split in 4 orders namely <25%, 25-50%, 50-75% and 75%< then we can following formula and put fonts as you have suggested :
=IF(A2<0.25,CHAR(153),IF(A2<=0.5,CHAR(155),IF(A2=0.76,CHAR(152)))))
And then using Conditional Formating we can dashboard reflected on different COLOURS as per their respective alert.
Best Regards
Rohit1409
Hi Chandoo,
Nice Post !!! just to add something for EXL 2003, we can also 4 Ifs and link to the alert data
For Ex: If we have alert data in Cell A2 and want to split in 4 orders namely <25%, 25-50%, 50-75% and 75%< then we can following formula and put fonts as you have suggested :
=IF(A2<0.25,CHAR(153),IF(A2<=0.5,CHAR(155),IF(A2=0.76,CHAR(152)))))
And then using Conditional Formating we can dashboard reflected on different COLOURS as per their respective alert.
Best Regards
Rohit1409
The Complete formula [Don't Know how it got cut ]
=IF(A2<0.25,CHAR(153),IF(A2<=0.5,CHAR(155),IF(A2=0.76,CHAR(152)))))
PS : Use in single line [I have split it to avoid cuts 😉 ]
Hi Chandoo..
why it is not displaying the complete formula..
anyways here is the balance
"=IF(A2<0.25,CHAR(153), IF(A2<=0.5,CHAR(155), IF(A2=0.76,CHAR(152)))))"
@Rohit... your formulas are fine. Just that the width of comment area is fixed and hence my website is cropping it at 640pixels. I just edited your formula and added few white spaces so that it wraps nicely.
Very good idea btw.. kudos!
Hi,
Maybe just go for 'bold' ; 'underline' or 'italic' to draw the users attention? Those methods (if those can be called methods) are used cross media type (books, journals, blogs, billboards, ...) to guide the readers eye to valuable information.
Just a basic thought
@Tom.. good idea..
[...] has a very nice writeup on how to add such alerts to dashboard sheets. Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)Divide your data set into workbooksHow to enforce [...]
Hi Chandoo,
You certainly grabbed my attention! although I wasn't sure what my brother (Suresh) and cousin (Shyam) were doing right, and I was doing wrong? 😉
I love your blog btw - Many thanks for all your hard work in unravelling the secrets and mysteries of Excel!
Best regards
Ramesh
I thought I saw an advertisment for a book about learning excel called excel himalaya or something. It cost about 35.00 us money but seemed to have the things I need to have my admin assistant to start to use. I was hoping to start with this book and then send her to school if she shows some interest and aptitude. Any help on this would be appreciated. Thanks
Great web site and information!!!!
@Jeff... checkout http://chandoo.org/wp/2010/08/25/excel-everest-review/
thanks, your website is awesome!
[...] Alerts to highlight focus areas [...]
[...] There are lots of numbers in this dashboard. I would suggest adding few more visualizations like showing indicators or applying conditional formatting or replacing a table with a chart. This would reduce the [...]
[...] is the same technique as alert icons in dashboard. Just that I also showed green [...]
[...] is the same technique as alert icons in dashboard. Just that I also showed green [...]
Hi Chandoo
Firstly thanks for all the cool tips on how to use Excel better.
I am new to the site and have a question which you may be able to assist with but dont know if these comment boxes are the best way of asking ?
I am looking at assets and trying to calculate the depreciation total by taking a year (say 2010) adding the expected life of the asset (say 10 years) then comparing that to a future date (say 2015) using an IF statement. The calculation in normal is - IF((year in col B (2010) plus 10years)>year 2015, add a years depreciation, otherwise leave blank). The converted date value does not appear able to add 10 years in order to compare it to 2015. Am I missing something ?
I use the “IF” Statement in conjunction with Conditional Formatting in MS Excel to give verbiage to alert one of a required action, dependant on a review date. This makes a visual stimulus, plus it clues one as to what the conditional format is trying to warn you about and what follow-up actions are required.
Wow, I'm really impressed with dashboards. I had no idea this stuff was even possible with excel. I'd like to offer an interactive dashboard to my customers, showing analytics of their data. I have a .pdf file with the datapoints. I'd like them to enter the data on my website, and be able to see their data. Is something like that possible.
Hi Chandoo,
I've recently purchased the package for both templates.
In the portfolio dashboard,under the calculations worksheet, I'm attempting to change the date range in the gantt chart to show only the range of the project that starts in late 2013. How do I do this?
Thanks
Adam
[...] is the same technique as alert icons in dashboard. Just that I also showed green [...]
Hi Chandoo,
I'm new at Excel Dashboard and found your blog really useful and helpful! It's very nice of you that you dedicate your time to do this.
Could you please explain how can I use Alerts based on dates on a Dashboar?
For example, if a target date is coming closer to the actual date, the alert is yellow or red.
I'd really appreciate some help!
Thank you
Where can I download the file Excel of Averall Statistics ???
Thanks a lot.