In this article we will learn what a Panel Chart is and how you can construct a panel chart in Excel.
What is a Panel Chart?
A panel chart is a set of similar charts neatly aligned in panels to help us understand some data which has multiple variables in it.
Here is an example panel chart showing the total defects per module over the last 4 weeks.
Panel charts are also called by names “trellis displays” or “small multiples”. They are an effective way to display multi-variable data.
Why use Panel Charts?
Excel has several built-in chart types like stacked column chart, clustered column chart that can help you visualize same data. I have shown 2 alternatives below. First observe them,
As you can see these charts communicate the data very poorly (despite using same colors and other chart elements as the panel chart). This is where a panel chart shines.
How to make a Panel Chart in Excel?
There are 2 approaches to make panel charts in excel.
1. Making one complex chart that internally has panels containing individual charts (requires lots of calculations and chart formatting.)
2. Making different charts and aligning them on excel sheet.
There are merits and de-merits both approaches, but I personally prefer #2, since it is very easy to make panel charts with that approach.
Step 1: Make different charts
Very simple. Make different charts, one for each panel in your panel chart.
Trick: Make the first chart. Format it completely. Now select the chart and press CTRL+D to duplicate it. Now, using the mouse adjust the source data ranges of this new chart. That is all.
Step 2: Adjust Axis Formatting of the charts
You should set the axis minimum and maximum values for all charts at the same level. This will ensure that users can compare values from multiple panels without worrying about axis scale.
Also consider setting the axis labels of subsequent panels (other than first) to white color (or background color). Since axis has same scale and limits, there is no point in showing that in every panel.
Step 3: Align the charts
There are various alignment options possible for panel charts. I have shown a few samples below:
Depending on the number of panels, choose an alignment that works best for you. Keep in mind that when you align vertically, horizontal axis comparison is easier and when you align horizontally, vertical comparison is easier.
So align the charts in a logical order that works for you. And that is all. Your panel chart is ready to roll.
Panel Charts – Things to keep in mind:
- Make sure all panels have similar axis ranges. Otherwise your audience cannot compare panels and the chart becomes useless.
- Select the alignment that is both aesthetic and comparable
- Panel charts usually contain multi-variable data. You must figure out what is the best panel arrangement (in our case, other alternative is, Weekly panels with Defects by Modules) for your audience.
Download Excel Panel Chart Template & Example Workbook:
Click here to download excel panel chart template & examples. [Excel 2007 version here]
Panel Charts – More Resources & Help:
- Jon Peltier has written at length about Panel Charts in Excel. Here is a beautiful article showing vertical panel chart example. Here is an article on Panel Charts with Different Scale.
- Kelly O’ Day has coined the term Panel Charts and he has several useful examples of panel charts in his site Process Trends.
- Juice Analytics beautifully explains what panel charts are.
- I have written about panel charts before. Learn more from incell panel chart, Incell dot plot panel chart, and see some example panel charts in visualizing market share changes.
Have you ever used panel charts? What is your opinion?
I find panel charts very powerful and insightful. However, I hate the fact that making them in Excel is so cumbersome. (but the effort is totally worth it.) I have used panel charts in various consulting and work assignments and wowed my audience.
What about you? Have you ever used panel charts? How do you make them? What is your experience like? Please share using comments.
35 Responses to “75 Excel Speeding up Tips Shared by YOU! [Speedy Spreadsheet Week]”
I see most are saying that array formulas are bad. But I thought that when you use array formulas it grabs all the data at once and performs the calculations in one fell swoop. At least that is how the UDFs that I created work. When I did the time test it was much faster that way. Maybe I'll go back and check to make sure my work is right, but that's what I did.
When I work with array formulas I get a full column of data then work on that column and return a full column of data all at once. Which has shown to be much faster than the alternative.
Anyone have special insights on this?
wow..! thats a pretty impressive list, some real gems in there. I read somewhere the other day that spreadsheet development should be 80% planning and 20% implementation - taking the time to think about layout, how you're going to calculate things and how to structure the data often results in a lot less headaches, and more time for deeper analysis...
Hi Chandoo...
Mixed feeling about this article, while I completely agree with you when you share everyone's points under their name giving credit to contributors, but at the same time I see alot of repeated tips and few those may not be applicable under all cases. (I may have sounded harsh). Some kind of sorting of tips were required than mere 3 categorization. (Tough ask, I know). Some really worthy and awesome tips get lost in occean.
I would have been happy to read only non repititive tips and more like standard chandoo articles.
Well, I have also got two tips (may get lost in the list above), which is not presented above:
1. When using too many pivots - Disable data drilling option. This reduces file size, cache memory and speeds up file.
2. If your macro has used too many files for gathering input, close the file and open. This is also release or kill unwanted space in memory and speeds up. Again this can be achieved by macro to close self file and reopen same file, using timer function.
Please do not count me negative.
Regards,
Prasad DN
Hey, one thing that really speeds up VBA processing of data is to extract ranges into arrays & then working on those arrays. Arrays are a lot faster than using cell offset or any other method for working with a database. After you are done you can also paste the value directly into the range with one single command. This will speed up the macros considerably.
Here is a msdn article with examples in it:
msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa139976(v=office.10).aspx
Hope this helps
oops, noticed a typo in the tip I posted:
Re directly assigning values in VBA rather than copying & pasting should have read:
Sheet2.Range( "B1:B200 ").Value= Sheet1.Range( "A1:A200 ").Value
not
Sheet2.Range( "B1:B200 ").Value= Sheet1.Range( "A1:A100 ").Value
Corrected with double quotes:
Sheet2.Range("B1:B200").Value= Sheet1.Range("A1:A200").Value
[...] posts on speeding up Excel worksheets, one of the posts focuses on formulas and another he let the general readers make their suggestions. I made the suggestion that people use array formulas. But most of the other suggestions said not [...]
OK, I tested it. My UDFs were faster as array functions (like a couple thousand times). But Excel's built in functions are faster when not doing arrays. Not sure this is the case for all situations.
I can't help but to speak up.
Deleting a PivotTable will not speed up your workbook. It will only reduce the file size. There is zero memory processing for a pivot table if it just sits there.
Instead of destroying the pivot table, why not remove the redundant raw data. That would equally reduce the file size of the workbook, while keeping the pivot table functionality.
http://datapigtechnologies.com/blog/index.php/cut-the-size-of-your-pivot-table-workbooks-in-half/
Thanks a lot guys for your valuable tips !!
It really worked for me
Application.ScreenUpdating = False
Application.Calculation = xlCalculationManual
...
...
...
Application.ScreenUpdating = True
Application.Calculation = xlCalculationAutomatic
I would add:
Application.StatusBar = "Wait a second..."
............
Application.StatusBar = False
Optimizing Speed using Pivot Tables:
If you find that Pivot Tables are becoming sluggish becomes of the sheer volume of tables there is a way to increase performance. By default (xls 2010) pivot tables are designed to autofit the data within the columns as well as preserving formatting. I discovered that unchecking these two options alone will exponentially increase performance.
Here's how to do it:
Right click on your pivot table(s) --->choose 'Pivot Table Options' -->Layout & Format' Tab --->uncheck two boxes at the bottom. Done!
here is my list:
1. Avoid Variants when possible
2. Use long instead of integer
3. Use double instead of single
4. Use booleans as much as possible
5. pull data into arrays, manipulate, then dump back to workbook
6. use .value2 instead of .value if you are looking at strings or numeric values
7. set object variables
dim Wks as Excel.Worksheet
set wks = thisworkbook.Sheets("Sheet1")
8. use with statements...
with wks.cells(x,y)
.value2 = "abcd"
.interior.colorindex=4
with .font
.bold=true
.size =20
.underline=xlunderlinestylesingle
end with
9. use string version of functions (Left$() instead of Left())
10. Test for empty string variables with len() or lenb()...if lenb(String1)=0 then
11. Use the Mid$() function if it is possible instead of split()
12. use the join$() function instead of concatenating strings
13. AscW() to evaluate first characters
14. combine if statements and booleans together
boolean = (lenb(String1) = 0)
16. InStr(), InStrB(), InStrRev() are very fast, InStr() can be used to quickly return a substring occurrence of a string
17. DICTIONARIES!!!!!!!!!!!
18. FileSystemObject
19. My machine runs slightly faster when i fill in all the inputs of a function (instead of InStrB(String1, "abcd"), i use (InStrB(1,String1,"abcd",vbBinaryCompare)
20. Short Circuit If statements: If x = 2 then if y >3 then if z = 5 then b=true or
if x=2 then
if y >3 then
if z=5 then
b=true
c=true
end if
end if
end if
21. use ElseIf
22. my testing indicates ElseIf is slightly faster than a Case Select
23. set strings to empty by: = vbnullstring
24. with application
.screenupdating = false
.displayalerts = false
.enableevents = false
end with
25. UserForms can be very beneficial
26. User-Defined Types are a very neat way to encapsulate data
27. User-Defined Functions are handy, but can increase run-time if called thousands of times
28. if using ElseIfs, nested And Ifs or Select Case statements, put the argument that will occur most frequently at the beginning
29. Looping is not the worst thing...just got to figure out how to do it the most efficiently
30. Use dynamic arrays instead of static arrays
31. if you can figure out Win32 APIs, then they are usually much faster than VBA functions
I worked on a massive spreadsheet and it had become very slow over time as I developed it. I tried stripping down more and more formulas by replacing with pasted values, removed all conditional formatting etc. In the end what finally did the trick was when I removed the last single SUMPRODUCT fomula. It changed the updating time after one change from 7-8 seconds to instantaneously. The SUMPRODUCT I had used the full columns, and if I put it to only look at rows 1-500 it was fine.
[...] Speeding up Excel – 75 tips [Visitors: 36,157 ] Using Excel as your database [ 32,455 ] Comprehensive guide to VLOOKUP [ 23,745 ] 66 Dashboards visualizing Excel salary survey data [ 26,148 ] Interactive Sales chart in Excel [ 21,444 ] Compare 2 Excel sheets – howto? [ 21,820 ] Send mails using Excel VBA & Outlook [ 22,294 ] Customer Service Dashboard in Excel [ 18,136 ] Making your dashboards interactive [ 15,294 ] Extract numbers from text in Excel [ 18,490 ] [...]
TIPS FOR SPEEDING UP EXCEL
(1) Instead of writing a lot of formulas to organise data, you can VLOOKUP() the data in a Pivot table, thereby combining the advantages of Pivot table and VOOKUP().
(2) If you have a range named ‘TotalTaxForTheCurrentFinancialYear’, then it is not compulsory to use this name when making the worksheet. Naming the range as ‘Tax’ or simply ‘T’ will be sufficient. The formula =SUM(T) will be shorter and easier to use.
After completing typing all the formulas, simply edit the name of the range from ‘T’ to ‘TotalTaxForTheCurrentFinancialYear’, in the name box. The formula =SUM(T) will automatically change to =SUM(TotalTaxForTheCurrentFinancialYear).
Vijaykumar Shetye, India
VBA
I don't write many macros and like most of you when doing a recalculation it sometimes takes forever.
I have found that when I looked at my spreadsheet, I could determine which order of calcuations (by column) would produce the least number of iterations. So I wrote a macro to do my calculations on my terms. I picked the order of the columns I wanted to calcuate and it sped up my recalc 5-10X.
I did this so long ago, I believe I used "expression .Calculate".
TIPS TO SPEED UP EXCEL by Vijaykumar Shetye, India
You can view all the formulas in the entire worksheet quickly by pressing [ctrl] and [~] keys simultaneously.
To view results, press the key combination again.
i need help about excle lerning and reports making with dash bord i have no facility to join the on classes.
sajjad.hussain165@gmail.com
Is there any command to get time with seconds
Is there any way to create an excel file for specific time period, afterwards it will not open
[...] are looking for , but give it a try : Optimize Slow VBA Code. Speed Up Efficient VBA Code/Macros 75 Excel Speeding up Tips - How to speed-up & optimize slow Excel workbooks? | Chandoo.org - Lea... [...]
I've had to do a lot of mass calculations for reports etc. that involved repetitive identical, yet complex formulae, which took forever...
I hit on a great time-saver: sort the spreadsheet data; if, for example, the same result was due to a lookup of Hotel Name (A column), Date (B column), and Room Type (F column), the formula (Z column) would be: "=IF(A2&B2&F2=A1&B1&F1,Z1,VLOOKUP(A2&B2&F2,LookUps!A:G,7,FALSE))".
This meant that if the result is the same as the row above, just use the same answer, thus saving loads of time instead of VLOOKUPs. (This is a simplified example, the actual one had INDIRECT(ADDRESS...) in it, too!)
Check files for invalid range names, invalid links and names that aren't needed any longer.
Clearing out some 200 old references in a template made the file open go from 30 seconds to 2.
You can improve the speed by stopping calculation during changing cell value and after that you can enable it. please follow the link.
http://webtech-training.blogspot.in/2013/10/how-to-stop-heavy-formula-calculation.html
[…] 75 Excel Speeding Tips Its a long List, many repeated but worth a visit. […]
[…] 75 Speed-up tips by Chandoo (smartly done by crowd sourcing) […]
[…] Are you opening slow excel files? Use this reference to speed up your excel sheets […]
If you want to highlight the content or result within a cell with colour, use content colour not cell fill colour. This make a large data sheet fast as full colour takes up more resource.
There are already so many useful replies, so don't be mad at me if I repeat someone with the following hints.
While using pivot tables:
1. Link (raw) data from external files, rather then building pivots in the same workbook of the data. => Reduces file size.
2. don't flag "keep source data" in pivot settings. => reduces cache.
Downside is when you want to use slicers, you must allow refresh of the source data and thus people need access to that file.
One extra when using tables above ranges: replace the table header references by cell references in heavy duty formulas. I'm not sure but it seems to be faster and lighter (in #MBs).
hi
iam student and need xloptimizer( no demo) for solving the mathematical model
can you help me
thanks alot
@Reza
We cannot give away XLoptimizer
Why not post a question in the Chandoo.org Forums
http://forum.chandoo.org/
Dear Sir,
Thanks a lot for sharing tips & tricks of excel....
I read it , understand it and then use it in job and that has helped me a lot....
Thanks a lot...
Himanshu.
Mumbai, India.
In VBA, send out values to the worksheet all together as an array then excel will only re-calculate once rather than each time a cell that is output.
to the guy who said avoid looping in VBA - easier said than done, it's one of the most powerful uses for VBA out there. I'd therefore recomend the half way house and break the loop as soon as you've got what you want, don't let it run until the end. Use While etc.
What I would say on VBA in general is minimise sheet to code interations. Suck all your data into a VBA array THEN do the maths don't use cells themselves as stand alone visual variables.
And to the lady who said it's faster offline - that's because Microsoft are constantly contacting their own website be it security verification and/or update checks
Apply some logic to the order of criteria in sumifs / countifs formula
order the most exclusive criteria first. Once one criteria fails the others do not execute.
Bing AI, given the following query, confirms this: "excel countifs. if one criteria is likely to exclude most of the data range then should this criteria go first in the list to prevent frivilous executions".