We have received a chart for chart busters that required some fixing. I thought, this will be a fun exercise for you. So here it goes,
…column chart that shows daily, weekly or monthly data depending on the user’s choice. In daily the columns are displayed properly, but in weekly & monthly mode the columns are a fraction of the width they should be – why, and how can this be avoided? Bonus points if you can describe how to use an INDIRECT formula on the x-axis labels which is another problem I ran into whilst creating this mockup!
You can download the workbook from here.
Here is how it is looking:
Thanks Gordon for asking this question.
Featured Answers:
There were several people who answered this correctly. I am featuring two answers for this problem.
By Jeff Weir:
One way to fix this is to select the ‘axis options/axis type/text axis’ option in the axis dialogue box (it’s current setting is “Automatically select based on data”.
Then it would be good if you set the ‘interval between tick marks as one, as well as the ‘interval between labels’ as 1 also.
Unfortunately then you run into the problem that your dates are now too wide for the space allowed for them on the graph. Easiest way to do that is to firstly make the graph a little wider, and secondly have an intermediate formula that formats your dates so they have a character return between the month and year, like this:
1 Jan
2009
instead of this:
1 Jan 2009
You can accomplish that with a formula along the lines of this:
=DAY(B6)&CHOOSE(MONTH(B6),” Jan”, ” Feb”, ” Mar”, ” Apr”, ” May”, ” Jun”, ” Jul”, ” Aug”, ” Sep”,” Oct”,” Nov”,” Dec”)&CHAR(10)&YEAR(B6)
Also, the y axis could do with a custom number format. No point of displaying all those zeros if say $250k or 250k (assuming not a currency) will do.
You can see it here
By Gerald Higgins
Well, here goes with the simple solution (in 2003).
Right click the chart, and select Chart Options.
On the AXES tab, there are 3 options under “Category (X) axis”.
I think the option for Time scale was originally selected.
The option for “Automatic” also does not work.
But the option for “Category” does work.
All the commenters with an answer will receive their discount codes by this weekend. Enjoy.
Lear more about making better charts using these chart busters examples:
- Asset Allocation Charts – Done the right way
- Calorie chart – How much you should exercise for what you eat – fixed properly
8 Responses to “Pivot Tables from large data-sets – 5 examples”
Do you have links to any sites that can provide free, large, test data sets. Both large in diversity and large in total number of rows.
Good question Ron. I suggest checking out kaggle.com, data.world or create your own with randbetween(). You can also get a complex business data-set from Microsoft Power BI website. It is contoso retail data.
Hi Chandoo,
I work with large data sets all the time (80-200MB files with 100Ks of rows and 20-40 columns) and I've taken a few steps to reduce the size (20-60MB) so they can better shared and work more quickly. These steps include: creating custom calculations in the pivot instead of having additional data columns, deleting the data tab and saving as an xlsb. I've even tried indexmatch instead of vlookup--although I'm not sure that saved much. Are there any other tricks to further reduce the file size? thanks, Steve
Hi Steve,
Good tips on how to reduce the file size and / or process time. Another thing I would definitely try is to use Data Model to load the data rather than keep it in the file. You would be,
1. connect to source data file thru Power Query
2. filter away any columns / rows that are not needed
3. load the data to model
4. make pivots from it
This would reduce the file size while providing all the answers you need.
Give it a try. See this video for some help - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5u7bpysO3FQ
Normally when Excel processes data it utilizes all four cores on a processor. Is it true that Excel reduces to only using two cores When calculating tables? Same issue if there were two cores present, it would reduce to one in a table?
I ask because, I have personally noticed when i use tables the data is much slower than if I would have filtered it. I like tables for obvious reasons when working with datasets. Is this true.
John:
I don't know if it is true that Excel Table processing only uses 2 threads/cores, but it is entirely possible. The program has to be enabled to handle multiple parallel threads. Excel Lists/Tables were added long ago, at a time when 2 processes was a reasonable upper limit. And, it could be that there simply is no way to program table processing to use more than 2 threads at a time...
When I've got a large data set, I will set my Excel priority to High thru Task Manager to allow it to use more available processing. Never use RealTime priority or you're completely locked up until Excel finishes.
That is a good tip Jen...