Yesterday we have posted how to use excel combo charts to group related time events. In the comments, Art Johnson says,
This is awesome. I love this blog. I have dealt with this issue before. Usually my issue is monthly anomolies caused by fiscal months of 4 weeks followed by 4 weeks, and then 5 weeks in each quarter. This causes a spike in March, June, Sept., and Dec. It’s one reason I prefer to look at quarterly trends rather than monthly. This chart is quite nice to see these effects. Is there a way to just toggle between two charts? One of weekends and one of weekdays? […]
This effect can be easily achieved with a cup of coffee, one combo box form control and the good old IF formula. Look at it yourself.
I am not going to provide the complete recipe. But here is the gist. I am sure you can take the help of that coffee in case you are stuck.
- Add a combo-box form control using forms tool bar or Developer ribbon. (not able to find the developer toolbar in excel 2007? see this)
- Set the input range for combo box to two cells where the values “weekdays” and “weekends” are mentioned.
- Also set the “cell link” for the combo box to some free cell like IV32000
- Now change the dummy series (the range where the column chart values for zebra lines are mentioned) values to a formula.
- The formula should be able to change the dummy values based on the selection in combo box. This is your homework to figure out.
- That is all. You now have a chart that dynamically groups events based on user selection. Pretty cool eh ?
Download the workbook and see it yourself
Click here to download the workbook and play with it.
Where can you use this technique?
Oh, several places. To begin with,
- To highlight new products vs. older products in a product-wise sales chart
- To highlight top 10 vs. bottom 10 values in a big chart
- To highlight values of a certain product / project vis-a-vis the whole set of values
What do you think about this idea?
Have you ever tried similar ideas in a report or dashboard? What is your experience? Personally I find dynamic charts more effective compared to static charts. Users like them, they like to play with the control(s) and make their own observations. Do you agree?
PS: If you are looking for a way to compare 2 KPIs or metrics in charts, see the part 5 of dashboard tutorial
11 Responses
Ciao Hui,
Collecting Excel tricks under the title “Notable Excel Websites (Non-MVP) Edition” is a brilliant idea…
Thank you in the name of all The FrankensTeam.
On our site there is a box with a picture and text highlighting:
This is a no-MVP site
we think ourselves “bad boys” a bit 🙂
For those who would like to know why our site is a no-MVP site, enough to click on the link:
http://goo.gl/lxDszY
Thank you again!
Thanks a lot
I really enjoyed this (newsletter). I must admit that I rarely read an Excel newsletter (and I subscribe to quite a few) all the way though, but this grabbed my attention and before I realized it, I was engrossed in it. I must also admit that most of this I don’t understand, yet. But, it excites me when I do learn something new in Excel. I can’t wait to see how much of this I can implement into my (constantly-evolving) ‘House Budget’ & ‘Family Medical’ worksheets that I have developed over the past few years! I sure hope to see more of these type of newsletters in the future! Thanks!
Thanks for doing this Hui! I appreciate being included.
I like Tom’s tip a lot. I posted about a tool I wrote to automate this at http://yoursumbuddy.com/tables-edit-query-dialog/
EXCELLENT !
Hui, This post is Superb! More over I have always been a fan of Roberto’s work and have learnt a lot from him.
Here are some of my recent contributions
1. Customising markers in a chart – http://www.goodly.co.in/customize-markers-in-a-chart/
2. Charting Hacks to work faster – http://www.goodly.co.in/5-charting-hacks-to-help-you-work-faster/
3. 7 Date formulas to make life easy – http://www.goodly.co.in/date-formulas-in-excel/
4. Customised scrollbar using VBA – http://www.goodly.co.in/customized-scroll-bar-in-excel/
5. Adding Direct Legends – http://www.goodly.co.in/customized-scroll-bar-in-excel/
Hope everyone enjoys!
I like the Excel Ninja Menus.
1. Select a cell or range then move till the 4-way cross appears. Right-Click and drag the selection to another place in the worksheet then, like a ninja, a menu full of skills and throwing stars pops up allowing me to do all kinds of awesomeness.
2. When you click the fill box on a Date and right click and drag it down, a lot of amazing Date options pop up.
I also brand my Excel to remind myself that I’m awesome. In my personal macro workbook I place the following code.
Private Sub Workbook_Open()
Application.Caption = “SuperKrishna’s Awesomeness”
End Sub
My favorite tip goes along with #17. If you try to copy subtotaled data (and in earlier Excel versions filtered data),when you paste it all the data displays instead of just the summarized data.
To get around this, select your summarized data, click on Find and Select tab and then select Go to Special. Click Visible cells Only and click OK. Now paste and you will see that only the summarized data has been copied.
You can also go CTRL+G and then click the Special icon at the bottom of the dialog box.
What a great idea, Chandoo! I’d love to be included in your next edition:) Perhaps a VBA exclusive version?
@Ryan
I will review this concept about 6 months out from the original post and be sure to keep your site in mind
Hui…
That sounds great, Hui:) I just realized I gave credit to Chandoo for the idea and I should have attributed it to you.
Sorry about that!