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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32 Responses to “More than 3 Conditional Formats in Excel”

  1. m&a in recessionary market says:

    Dude,

    Long time... whts up , I see that urs is the only business which is posting a "Excel" lent growth in this recessionary market....

    Still alive ... so you will be able to reach me if make an attempt... 🙂

  2. James says:

    V E R Y N I C E !!!!

  3. Lincoln says:

    Hi Chandoo.

    When I use your macro in my file, I keep getting a Compile Error because the "cell" variable is not defined.

    Any suggestions?

  4. Chandoo says:

    @Lincoln: Did you have "option explicit" on?

    I am sorry, I didn't define the cell variable.

    you can add this line to the code just below the line "dim i"
    dim cell

    Let me know if you still get this error...

  5. Lincoln says:

    Ah. I've simply declared cell as a range.
    All good now

    Noob at work.

    Thanks for the article. Very helpful. 🙂

  6. Paul says:

    very, very helpful. I didn't know what "define named ranges" meant. one of my colleagues figured it out. I suggest you add the instruction "go to menu - insert/name/define and then make sure the cells at the bottom of the box change to reflect new values if you redefine the range." thanks.

  7. Jahabar says:

    Quite Intresting. If anyone could help. I am trying to do something like this but i want to define values and colours of the value in a range of cells ( Similiar) but i want the other cells to change colour when the value is same as the range defined. ANy help. I want instantaneous( Like conditional formatting) not like running macro.

  8. Chandoo says:

    @Jahabar: Welcome to PHD and thanks for the comments.

    If your source range and target range have same dimensions and source range has 4 different formats (conditional formatting limitation, unless you are using excel 2007) you can do this. If you have more than 4 formats then you may have to use VBA (and create an event like worksheet_change and monitor the range).

    Let me know if you come across a simple non-vba solution for this. 🙂

  9. serdarb says:

    very nice post...

  10. Stružák says:

    May I suggest a little modification of the code?

    Adding "Application.ScreenUpdating = False" at the beggining of the macro and "Application.ScreenUpdating = True" at the end speeds up significantly the whole procedure. As well as omitting "Operation:=xlNone, SkipBlanks:=False, Transpose:=False".

    Not a big deal in this example, but when formatting a larger range of cells, the difference is marked. I've tried to format the number 1457 of cells and the formatting was done 11 seconds faster. :-O

  11. [...] you can overcome the conditional formatting limitation using VBA macros (again, if you are new to excel, you may want to wait few weeks before plunging in to [...]

  12. Hi Chandoo

    Thanks for this macro. I have done few changes to this macro to suit my needs. I had removed the defined names data2use and conditions2use to ActiveWindow.RangeSelection.Address

    This way I can select the cells that require conditional formatting and then run the macro.

    Kind Regards,
    Vasanth

  13. asm says:

    Chandoo, I am using 2007. I noticed the conditional formatting options are different - and they have some built in funtictions for stop light displays, and other dashboard type elements. My question is this, I need to display more colors in the stop light than the standard 3. The World Health Org (WHO) has a Pandemic Flu alert level between 0-6, so i wanted to drive a sharepoint dashboard using excel based on 7 distinct levels. Suggestions?

    • Chandoo says:

      @ASM: very good idea. you can use font based symbols instead of excel traffic light icons to achieve this. the character "=" becomes a small circle when you change the font to "webdings". So you just need to insert a bunch of = signs and use conditional formatting to change the font color. If you need to combine numbers with symbols, then you can use 2 columns instead of one and format them accordingly. Let me know if you need some more help with this.

      Also, if possible, share with us your dashboard when it is ready.

  14. [...] Once we calculate values for all team members using the above formula, we can apply conditional formatting to make the heat map. In Excel 2007, this is one step. In earlier versions of excel, you need to specify 3 conditions to make the heatmap look hot enough or use a macro to get over the 3 conditional formats limitation. [...]

  15. Pitichat says:

    Chandoo,

    Why do you use the "conditions2use" since you can change the VBA and replace "conditions2use" with "data2use" and you won't have to create a zone for conditional formating equal to the data zone.

    The Data will be formated according the "formats2use". Just one thing, if you plan to have some "0" on your data zone, they will be formated like the first cell above your "formats2use" (the green cell with "Formats" inside in your exemple".
    That's why you should leave a white empty cell above the first cell of the "formats2use" zone.

    Regards,
    Pitichat

  16. Justin B says:

    Seeing as no one has posted what they actually might use something like this for here's my 2cents;
    I used the same concepts to build a heatmap of a casino gaming floor, with each populated cell representing a gaming machine (Slot Machine), some simple metric bucketing to determine different shades for the cells, user selectable colours, ability to pick a 'machine' (click on a cell) and repaint the 'floor' showing only machines with similar charateristics, select a value range and repaint the 'floor' showing only the 'machines' within the value range. Users could switch between metrics and repaint the the floor.

    It took a while to put together, but once in use was rolled out to four casinos and used for 4 years. It provided a portable (i.e. no custom software), easy to understand way to manage product from individual machine to groups / classes of product and made it very easy to see how products were performing in geographic relation to each other (something that tables & graphs can't easily do)
    Needless to say it "wowed" many people who only saw Excel as a tool for managing numbers and table based reports
    Being excel just about any user could maintain spreadsheet.

  17. Paul Chapple says:

    @ Justin B - Hey Justin, that counds AWESOME! Can I get a copy of the casino tracker, I work within a similar industry and would love to see how you've constructed it.

    Also, from using this heatmap, I think I'm getting confused. To make the map change color, I thought you had to change the DATA2USE cells, but I see it only changes if you change the vales of thew cells within the CONDITIONS2USE cells. Am I thinking this wrong?????

    Thanks all, this is REALLY making my life easier!!

  18. Rajeev says:

    Hi Dude,

    Thanks for this very useful macro. That was very helpful.

    Kepp up the good work.

    Cheers.

  19. Wagner says:

    Explanation like yours is so important to everyone that want to learn more and more in Excel. Thanks a lot. You are the man ! 🙂

  20. Lee says:

    Chandoo,

    If I wanted to replace the numbers 1-9 with text A-I, what would I need to do to the macro to make it work correctly?

    Thanks!

    • Hui... says:

      @Lee
      If the numbers are alone and not part of larger numbers >10 or with text you can simply use this formula
      =CHAR(A1+64)
      Change A1 to your cell
      Copy Down/Across as required
      Then select the new cells and copy/paste as Values over themselves.

  21. Cathy says:

    I'm trying to do a drop down list that will allow me to select a color and when I select that color it will change my cell to that color. i cannot use contion formating because I have 5 colors. Can you help me with this?
    thanks

  22. Anurag says:

    This tool was great. Can you please suggest a way to include conditions like if value in a cell lies in a range color some other cell red.

  23. CCC says:

    What do I need to change in the programing if I have a mix of numbers and letters.  Example; 5003, 2B01, W005, 1020.  I think the problem is the CInt code but I'm not sure.

  24. Bob says:

    EXCELlent - was able to use your macro with no problems.  Found that modifying it to use the DATA2USE range achived the same result as using the condition2use range.  If the two ranges were equal, your way allows the data range to have completely different values and still have the same color format at the end. 
     
    My data is a little different
    I have an irregular shaped building with students in it.
    I have a list of students assigned to the rooms with the courses they are on
    and a color code for the courses
    would there be a way of using indirect to translate the student names to color code the rooms to what courses they are on?
     

  25. [...] hi Check below link More than 3 Conditional Formats in Microsoft Excel - How to? | Chandoo.org - Learn Microsoft Excel O... [...]

  26. Graham Hartell says:

    The ability to conditional format a range of cells based on criteria in a different, but matching for size, range of cells is exactly what I've been looking for. Unfortunately the macro falls over at the line conditions (i) = CInt (cell.value). I have specified the 3 rangenames, working in excel 2003 but cannot get it to work. Any ideas. I've checked rangenames several times (0-16 being used) but no luck. Thanks

  27. Sebastian says:

    Hello you also can use this code to force ur worksheet to run with more then on condition.
    in this case the condition = case like in example if u want to format something between of the range 0 to 100 for a color
    Set I = Intersect(Target, Range("B2:B8")) <-- thatch the rage u want to work with just set it up for range of cell u want to use to format

    the second formula will show u Interior color nr index just time it and when u format the cell with a color it will show nr in the cell

    enjoy

    Private Sub Worksheet_Change(ByVal Target As Range)
    Set I = Intersect(Target, Range("B2:B8"))
    If Not I Is Nothing Then
    Select Case Target
    Case 0 To 100: NewColor = 37 ' light blue
    Case 101 To 200: NewColor = 46 ' orange
    Case 201 To 300: NewColor = 12 ' dark yellow
    Case 301 To 400: NewColor = 10 ' green
    Case 401 To 600: NewColor = 3 ' red
    Case 601 To 1000: NewColor = 20 ' lighter blue
    End Select
    Target.Interior.ColorIndex = NewColor
    End If
    End Sub

    Private Sub Worksheet_SelectionChange(ByVal Target As Range)
    Range("F1:F1") = Range("F1:F1").Interior.ColorIndex
    End Sub

  28. Tom says:

    Hi Chandoo,

    I tried to add the "More than 3 conditional formats for Excel" VBA macro
    to my Excel 2008 for Mac and it didn't work. Would this VBA macro work
    with Excel 2011 for Mac? Does it have to be a certain version: Student,
    Home & Office, or Standard?

    Thanks for your help.
    Tom

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