Conditional formatting is one of favorite features in Excel. CF has helped me save the day at work more than a dozen occasions. I almost became project manager just because I knew how to make a gantt chart in excel using conditional formatting. I have written extensively about it.
So, I was naturally curious to explore what is new in Excel 2010’s Conditional Formatting. In this post, I will share some of the coolest improvements in CF.
1. You can refer to data in other worksheets now
This is the best new addition to CF capabilities in Excel 2010. Now we can refer to data in other worksheets without using any named ranges or copying the data over to primary sheet.
2. Solid Data Bars, Finally!
In Excel 2007, MS introduced a new feature called “data bars”. It felt like an exciting thing, except for one gnawing problem. The bars have gradients. So, not only they looked ugly, but they were also difficult to read (also, they were inaccurate at default settings).
Thankfully MS rectified these problems and significantly improved data bars in Excel 2010.
Now, you can,
- Create data bars with solid fill
- Apply borders to data bars (so that even gradient fills look elegant)
- Have negative data bars
- Have an axis so that comparison is easy
Here is a small comparison between Excel 2007 & Excel 2010 Data Bars:
Using data bars to create in-cell progress charts:
You can use data bars to create in-cell progress charts (or thermo-meter charts) like this:
* Hint: The trick is to use cell background color along with data bar.
[Related: Jon Peltier has written a beautiful article reviewing data bars in Excel 2010.]
3. More Icon Sets in Conditional Formatting
Although I rarely use icons in conditional formatting, I am happy to report that MS has added 3 new sets of Icons to the conditional formatting library.
Also, you can mix and match icons depending on the rules (how I wish they didnt allow this. Mix and match can produce more evil combinations than good ones.)
What do you think about new CF Features in Excel 2010?
I am excited to try the data bars in real-world project. I find the possibility of referring to other sheets very good. Also, I am not sure if its just me, but Excel 2010 conditional formatting feels fast. In fact, not just CF, almost everything in Excel 2010 feels fast and responsive.
What about you? How are you planning to use Excel 2010 CF features in your work? Please tell us using comments.
PS: By leaving a comment, you can win a copy of Office 2010 – Home & Student Edition. Contest sponsored by Microsoft India.
References: Excel Conditional Formatting Improvements [MSDN blog]
Related: Excel 2010 – What is new? | Overview of Excel 2010 Sparklines
8 Responses to “Top 5 keyboard shortcuts for Excel Charts”
As far as I remember (checked, again, 2 minutes ago) in my "Excel 2013" in order to select various chart elements I need to use the Arrow keys and not the TAB key.
Practically, the TAB key does nothing (within a Chart).
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Michael (Micky) Avidan
Thanks for pointing this out. This is how I remember it too, but when I was recording the video yesterday, only TAB key worked. MS must have changed the keys in Excel 2016. I have edited the post to include both keys.
The key navigation on charts is different in 2016.
TAB cycles through a layer of objects (SHIFT+TAB cycles backwards)
ENTER move down a layer
ESC moves up a layer
So on a column chart with title/legend/data labels if you select the plotarea the TAB will go through Title > Legend > Plotarea.
ENTER at plotarea will then select Vertical axis. Tab will take you through
Horizontal axis > gridlines > Series > Horizontal Axis.
ENTER with series selected will then allow you to TAB through individual data points and data labels.
If you ENTER on datalabels you can TAB through each data label.
ALT + F1 : to create default chart
ALT+E S T = CTRL + ALT + V, T : I find that easier to remember
I second what Michael already said about TAB and arrow keys. I can't help but think if this is related to the "," or ";" as separator. I prefer to use the chart tools - layout- drop down box, anyway.
Got to be F11 for instant charting. Highlight your data , hit F11 and voila! ?
Ctrl+1 is the most important chart shortcut. In fact, it works for any Excel object: whatever is selected, Ctrl+1 opens the task pane or dialog to format that object.
Somewhere along the line, maybe when Excel 2016 came out, the arrow keys stopped working to cycle through the elements of a chart. But what works is holding Ctrl while clicking the arrow keys. I haven't gotten used to the Tab and other keys, but as long as Ctrl+Arrow works, I'm good.
And F4 used to be so helpful when formatting a lot of charts. But since Excel 2007 came out, it has been mostly useless. It used to remember a whole set of changes at once, so I get that the newer modeless dialogs make that impractical. But now it only seems to work with formatting of lines and borders, and maybe fills. I find myself writing a lot of VBA one-liners in the Immediate Window to handle these tedious formatting tasks.
after clicking on a chart, is there a shortcut key to copy it?
Thank you for the Alt E S T - tip. This is more than a time saver. Because of dynamic charts or de-activated external references to data when you make the charts, you often have empty charts that are otherwise impossible to format. So this shortcut helps adressing that. I will work with it more and see if there remain some obstacles.