Recipe for a Donut Bar Chart

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We all know that bar charts can be used to display values spread across various categories or times. We also know that pie charts / donut charts can be used to display percentage breakup of various quantities in a sum total. How about mashing up both to create a Donut Bar chart?

“oh, donut what?!? It sounds like a brand new junk food from dunkin’ donuts”

Well, not really. It is a mash-up or combo chart using which you can display, for eg. sales over last few years along with percentage break-up of individual products. See below to understand.

Use Donut Bar Charts to Display Product-wise Breakups in Sales

In the above chart we have mixed a bar chart with a donut chart and sprinkled it generously with a scroll bar form control.

In this charting tutorial, we will learn how to cook a donut bar chart using Microsoft Excel. Scroll down the page to get the downloadable workbook to see this in action.

Recipe for making a donut bar chart

A good donut bar can be healthy while adding variety to your regular menu of charts. To make a neat looking donut bar chart, just follow the recipe.

Ingredients:

Sales data (finely chopped – year vs product level), one donut chart, one bar chart, one scroll bar form control and 5 minutes of spare time.

Step 1: Get your dough, err, data ready

As with any chart, we need the right data in right format to make a perfect donut bar chart.

I have arranged the data for our chart in the below format.

Data and Format for Donut Bar Chart

The last column shows the values as per scroll bar position. (more on this in the next steps)

Step 2: Insert a scroll bar control and link it to a cell

Scrollbar settings for Donut Bar ChartGo to developer ribbon tab and insert a scroll bar form control. (learn more about turning on developer toolbar in excel 2007)

Once you have the scroll bar, link it to a cell, say B18.

Also, set the scroll-bar minimum value as 1, maximum value as the number of years you have (in our case it is 14) and incremental change to 1.

Step 3: Determine product-wise breakups and totals based on scroll bar selection

We can use INDEX() excel formula to do this.

What is INDEX excel formula?

INDEX formula (examples) returns a specific value from a range of cells by taking the row and column of that range as input. For eg. =INDEX(A1:C10,2,1) will return the value in 2nd row, 1st column, ie, the value in cell A2.

So, how to write the INDEX formula in our case?

That is your home work. Just use the kitchen sink to experiment.

Once you are done, the product-wise breakups should be listed in a tabular format like this.

Scrollbar settings for Donut Bar Chart

Step 4: Put everything together and boil for a minute

We have done all the ground work required to make the donut bar chart. Now, We just need to put everything together and make some charts. Here we have 4 small steps.

steps for making donut bar chart

  1. Insert a donut chart using the product-wise breakup data
  2. Insert a bar chart with the yearly totals
  3. Insert another series in the bar chart to show the selected year total. Completely overlap this series with the totals series.
  4. Position everything together.

Finally adjust formatting and colors as per your taste.

That is all, the donut bar is ready for consumption. Serve hot or chilled. The donut bar tastes great with a cup of coffee.

Download the donut bar chart excel work book and play with it

Click here to download the donut bar chart template & workbook. Change the values and chart attributes to understand how this works.

Also try a Bar Pie chart, just follow the same recipe, but replace donut with pie.

Please tell me how your donut bar tasted using comments. 🙂

Recommended charting tutorials for you:

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42 Responses to “Prevent Duplicate Data Entry using Cell Validations”

  1. Jair says:

    Hi Chandoo, I need you help in the following problem.
    I'm trying to get a direccion from a found result. With this dirreccion I will want the before cell value. For example, If result of a find is 38 localized in cell $C$2, I need to get previus value (cell $B$2 ), maybe Andrés.

    Do you know some way to do that?

    Thank you for you help.

  2. Lincoln says:

    Hi Chandoo

    Thanks for this. One thing though: In my pre-2007 version of Excel, the COUNTIF function doesn't recognise a semicolon (;), but requires a comma.

    Is the semicolon an Excel 2007 thing?

  3. Chandoo says:

    Jair... I am not sure I understand what you want. what do you mean by Dirreccion?

    @Lincoln: I am sorry, often I forget that I am using European version of excel where the delimiter is ; instead of ,. I have corrected the formula now.

  4. subbu says:

    Thanks for this nice tip, i used to do a find all after filling every new items which was cumbersome.

    Do you know a way to extend this validation search to other tabs/sheets ?

  5. Jair says:

    Thanks for you attention. I'm trying to get of value continue from a found value. Let me show a example:

    Name Years
    John 35
    Maria 28
    Teresa 32

    If I search the max years, the result is 35, but I need that result to be John. Do you know how I can do it?

  6. Chandoo says:

    @Subbu.. you can easily extend the validation to other sheets by pasting the data validations. See the latest article here: http://chandoo.org/wp/2009/10/28/copy-data-validations/

    @Jair.. you can use the large() or small() formulas to do this. for eg. =index(A1:A3,large(B1:B3,1)) will get you the name of the person with highest "years". More help here: http://chandoo.org/excel-formulas/large.html

  7. Jair says:

    Hi, I don't know if I'm using bad the formula or its performance is diferent for my Office version. Large() formula return the value in the cell, in my example 35. The index() formula use a range, row and column. I'm using the large() as number of row, and it is bad because into the range don't have row 35. This is my perception. What do you think?

  8. Chad says:

    Hello,
    I am trying to attempt data validation in Excel Mobile, but the DV tool isnt available. I want to prevent duplicates is all, any advice on acheiving this in Excel Mobile? Thanks..

  9. Chandoo says:

    @Jair... my french aint that good. it starts at "merci" and ends at "beau coup".

    Anyhow, you need to merge the large with vlookup to do this. I am not sure if you have solved the problem. Otherwise let me know with details and I can write the formula in comments.

    @Chad... I have never used excel mobile, so I have no idea. May be they have not implemented data validations in excel mobile.

    Any excel mobile users out there?

  10. Jair says:

    Hi Chandoo, the proposed solution by JlD is interesting. He created a macro to get values when the matrix is not one dimensional, how on my problem. This fuction for me.
    I would like to share you my work, how can I upload?

  11. Chandoo says:

    @Jair.. sorry for such a delayed reply.. you can upload the files to skydrive and link them here. Or you can email them to me at chandoo.d @ gmail.com and I will upload them somewhere. But it could take forever if you email files to me as I am a bit lazy.

  12. [...] Day 31: Advanced Data Validation Tricks in Excel – Part 2 [...]

  13. Muhammad Moin says:

    Hi,

    Can you help me in Microstrategy?

    Br,
    Moin

  14. Ramprasad says:

    really wonderful article. I feel it is implementing Primary Key concept into spreadsheets.

  15. sriram says:

    Hi article on data validation. Excel is a very versatile platform to work with and we use it for all kinds of data tabulation. In fact this must have been the most rudimentary data management tools I must have worked with and knowing such tips only adds functuionality to our user experience. Great article. looking forawrd to read more.

  16. Vasanth says:

    Hi Chandoo,

    Thanks for such a nice idea.

    I tried copy paste the data into the validated area, but the pop-up msg (warning msg) doesn't came. Is it something that we need to update the data manually each time,.

    Do we have any option where we can bulk upload the number and it throws a warning message that the data already exits and do we want to continue with this ?

    Please do reply me.

    Thank you.

    Regards,
    Vasanth.

  17. kochu says:

    It was really useful chandoo...thanks a lot...

  18. Leo says:

    Tried this in excel 2010 and it did not work?
    Could the newer excel have changed that much?

    • Hui... says:

      @Leo

      It works fine in Excel 2010

      The formula used above =COUNTIF($B$4:$B$11,B4)<=1

      only applies to the range B4:B11

      Did you adjust the range to your data?

  19. Tariq Khan says:

    This page helped me accurately to find solution of my question. thanx

  20. Murli says:

    we want to prevent duplicate entries in three columns combined, using data validation, i.e. say, column A has first name and Column B has middle name, Column C has last name. the first name can be duplicate, middle name can be duplicate, last name can be duplicate, but not all three at the same time.

  21. Murli says:

    I want to prevent duplicate entries in three columns combine, using data validation, i.e. say, column A has first name and Column B has middle name, Column C has last name. the first name can be duplicate, middle name can be duplicate, last name can be duplicate, but not all three at the same time.

  22. KokTiong says:

    Hi, I've tried above validation method to prevent duplicate value from entering into the cells. It's work, when user key in the data into the selected range. However, it's not working when user copy-&-paste the info into the same range.

    Please advice. Thanks. 

  23. ZAMEER SHAIKH says:

    Hi Chandoo,
     
    Does it work in Excel 2007?
     
    Please Reply

  24. mahavir says:

    thanks chandoo........

  25. SUSHOBH says:

    it does not work when data is copy pasted...any solution for this??

  26. shaloo says:

    hi i m shaloo and i want to know in excel if i write duplicate no.then it says or show about we are write duplicate no.

  27. Kris says:

    Hi Chandoo

    I've tried using this with a Named Range, which is actually a column in a Table as DV wont accept a table reference, and it wont work.
    Also tried using Offset to specify the Named Range, but that wont work either.

    Is it possible to use Named Ranges with DV?

    Thanks
    Kris

  28. Paula says:

    I have tried the above formula on a table column. The Error box does not pop up, there is only the small ! next to the cell with the duplicate. The column I am working with is formulas that produce a date. Is the reason it doesn't work that the cells contain formulas rather than data?

  29. Ken says:

    The formula works but only if I enter data in cell above it. So for example, if I have "123" in B11 it does not allow me to enter "123" in B10, B9, B8, etc. But I can still enter "123" in B12. Please help! 🙂

  30. Karan says:

    Great tip.. thanks a lot

  31. I have 21 years of experience working as data entry assistant. I constantly read several blogs to keep myself up-to-date with the advances in data entry profession. I really enjoyed this blog post. From my several years of experience, I agree with you 100% when you say, “ We all know that data validation is a very useful feature in Excel. You can use data validation to create a drop-down list in a cell and limit the values user can enter. ”

    Keep blogging. I will come here again.

    --data entry assistant

  32. HaroonRashid says:

    Hi,
    This is really very helpful.
    Thank you

  33. Junaid says:

    how can i assign two validation on a single cell
    one is for list validation (means the data should be from that range)
    second i want to prevent them from repetition

    how can i do this ?
    P7 to P506 have GR# which are for list
    i want to prevent C column to not to repeat and should be from the P column

  34. Gaurav says:

    friend can any one tell me the formula
    exname location qty
    gaurav 1 1
    rofan 2 5
    sandeep 3 6
    gaurav 4 3
    rofan 5 4
    sandeep 6 8
    gaurav 7 9

    If this is a data.
    if i want a formula by which if i type gaurav then all the location and qty should be shown in a new page.
    i had 5,00,000 sku so if i punch one name i can get the entire details

  35. Gaurav says:

    IF(ISERROR(INDEX($B$3:$C$9,SMALL(IF($B$3:$B$9=$B$12,ROW($B$3:$B$9)-ROW($C$2)),ROW(A1:C1)),2)),"",INDEX($B$3:$C$9,SMALL(IF($B$3:$B$9=$B$12,ROW($B$3:$B$9)-ROW($C$2)),ROW(A1:C1)),2))
    please explain

  36. MD. RASEL SARDER says:

    YOUR COUNTIF FORMULA IS REALLY HELPFUL AND WORKS. I TRIED SEVERAL SITES BUT THEIR FORMULA DOES NOT WORK. ONLY YOU HAVE GIVEN A RIGHT FORMULA!
    THANK YOU!!!!!

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