Today we will learn an interesting animation technique that ONLY uses, … wait for it …, Excel Formulas. That is right, we will use simple formulas to animate values in Excel.
Intrigued? Confused? Interested?
First see these Excel animation demos:
Animated icons & fill-color
Animated In-cell Charts
Click here to download the workbook with these examples.
What is the secret sauce behind this animation?
Take 1 portion of crushed basil leaves, 2 portions of grounded roasted coffee beans and mix them with hot water. Add enough sugar and throw it away. 😛
Now, come back to your excel workbook and use circular references to generate the animation effect.
Understanding how Circular References & Iterative Calculation Mode work
In order to get this animation, you should be familiar with two excel magic spells – Circular References & Iterative Calculations. In simple terms,
Circular Reference: is when a cell refers to itself in the formula. For eg. in cell A1, if you write =A1+1, it is a circular reference. The reference can be both direct or in-direct (ie you can refer to cell B1, which refers to A1 again).
Iterative Calculation: If a cell has circular reference, excel can quickly go in to infinite loop (not the place where Apple is head-quartered). To avoid this, we use iterative calculation mode. When you enable this mode, excel solves the cell references only a certain number of times.
Here is an excellent guide on circular references.
How to enable iterative calculation mode?
Simple, go to Excel options > Formulas and then select iterative mode. Change the number of iterations to a large value (so that we can see some animation). Like this:
How to use Circular References & Iterative Mode for Animation?
It doesn’t take a lot of coffee to conclude that using circular references & iterative mode of calculation, we can increment a cell value from 1 to 100 (or 4000, if you fancy).
Assuming you want to increment the value in A1 from 0 to 100, and A2 is used to control the animation (ie if you type “Yes” in a2, only then we increment the values).
In cell A1, we write =IF(A2=”yes”,IF(A1>=100,A1,A1+1),0)
If iterative mode is enabled, when you enter yes in cell A2, you can see the value in A1 going from 0 to 100, very fast.
Now, if you change the formula to =IF(A2=”yes”,IF(A1>=4000,A1,A1+1),0), you can see the cell value in A1 going up from 0 to 4,000 in a few seconds.
But, what about animation?!?
Now that we have the cell A1 changing its value when we want, we just need to link this with conditional formatting to get some magic.
For eg. you can apply conditional formatting on A1 with the following rule to change cell color as the value increases.
Similarly, you can use the value in A1 to draw in-cell charts that grow as the value changes in A1.
Just let your imagination run wild.
Where can you use such animation?
Animation is a powerful attention grabber. I think you can use this type of animation in dashboards to display alerts. For eg. you can highlight portions of dashboard that changed when a different product (or month) is selected.
That said, I strongly recommend against overuse of animation effects. They can quickly become annoying. Not to mention, they are cumbersome to maintain (and add little value).
What are the limitations of Circular Reference based animation?
- You must enable iterative mode of calculation.
- This doesn’t work with charts. Excel charts do not pick up cell values unless the calculation is finished. So you cannot plug values in to charts to expect animated charts. If you are curious to build one, see Daniel’s animated business charts example.
- This can slowdown your workbook: Whenever you run the animation, excel is going to do thousands of calculations and this will slowdown your workbook.
Download Excel Animation Workbook
I have put together a simple workbook showcasing several examples of this technique. Download and play with it.
Excel 2007 link | Excel 2003 link
(Make sure you have turned on the iterative mode.)
Do you find this technique interesting?
To be frank, I find this technique more amusing than useful. But I wrote about it anyway as it shows what is possible with excel. It can be useful in situations where there is too much information and you need to call users attention to something.
What about you? Do you see any practical applications for this technique? Share your ideas and opinions thru comments.
20 Responses to “Mortgage Calculator with Extra Payments – Excel Download”
Kia ora Chandoo, thanks for this wonderful template brother. How can I modify this/ or do you have a similar template for a fortnightly
payment? Thank you
Morena Rayd. You can adjust the multiplier / divider to 26 (I think it was set to 12) to see fortnightly details. Watch the companion video to understand the steps / logic.
It is very simple and easy to use. Is user interface is attractive. It is very helpful and beneficial for calculations.
This is great, thanks a lot!
I think there is an error in the "You save X $ in interest". If i dont put any extra payment, it still says that I will save 19k in interest rate.
I too realized this problem. I will post an update once I fix the error.
Updated on 11-Sep: I fixed the problem with "interest saved" calculation. Turns out there was an internal bug in cumipmt function in Excel that reports incorrect values. Something new!
Please use the link above to re-download the correct file.
Hi Chandoo, do you have a template that will make changes to figures going forward if the interest rate changes part way through the loan? Thank you for your help.
I wanted calculator which can consider floating interest rate, can you please advise how to get that?
I love your tutorial. If I am making weekly acelerated mortgage payments, how to I account for that in the Eff term?
Thank yo so much,
Christine
Hi Chandoo. I want an excel template where I can have my favourite stocks listed for which the prices changes on a dynamic basis every day as per the market. I mean a sheet which is linked to NSE for price changes and other changes like daily low, Daily high, Yesterday closing, last 10 day range, 52 week high, 52 week low, one month high, one month low, one week high and one week low etc
The excel is awesome but I am getting #NAME? error with the field 'Old Interest Paid' and subsequently Original Interest and Money saved. Can you tell me how to fix that. I am trying to check if I should complete my loan by the extra payments or instead invest the same amount elsewhere
#NAME error could mean your Excel doesn't have one of the functions I am using. Can you tell me what version you are using? If I am not mistaken, this file requires Excel 365.
Hi Chandoo, I am also getting the same error. I am using Office 2019. Would you be able to recommend a fix for this?
Regards,
How do you change the dollar to rupees for whole sheet to match indian currency
You can select the values and apply rupee formatting from cell formatting options.
Hey Chandoo,
Thank you for making the excel spreadsheet! It is great, but there another, little known money saving action that you can take to DRAMATICALLY reduce your total interest owed on your mortgage allowing you to pay it off 40% to 60% faster. I am going to share with you for free. It's called recasting your mortgage, which is a form of re-amortizing the interest that you owe on your loan by paying the the bank an early payment of $10,000 or more. The bank will modify your loan to cancel the original interest that you owe, and recalculate the total interest based on the new lower loan loan amount for the remaining term of the loan, instead of the original loan amount. This pays off the most expensive section of interest on your loan which is the next owed interest, instead of cancelling the interest at the end of your loan. Your charts show the interest being canceled on the last payments, however the interest can be canceled on your next upcoming portion of the loan, but keeps the ending date the same. However, the result of recasting the loan is you, pay the loan off 2 or 3 times faster, by paying off the portion of the loan with the highest interest cost. I am wondering if you can build a excel spreadsheet that shows this for me? I will pay you for making it. I am a mortgage loan officer and would like to use it to help my clients see the impact of paying off their loans this way. Thank you for considering this!
HI Chandoo.
Excellent sheet i watched your video and tried to edit sheet to suit my current mortgage however i cant get it to work. I am trying to set it to weekly payments.
I edited the monthly payments to =PMT(E7/52,E6*52,E5)
eff.term =ROUND(NPER($E$7/52,$E$10,$D13),0)
principal term to =PPMT($E$7/52,1,E13,D13)
cb w/o to =IF(C13=1,$E$5,J12)+PPMT($E$7/52,C13,$E$6*52,$E$5)
and interest paid to =IPMT($E$7/52,1,E13,D13) but i cant edit the arrays to increase the range to 1560 from 360, so i just added the numbers in and that worked for the array on the left but the old interest paid array im stuck. And the graph well the graph is useless now and i have no idea how to fix that. no idea at all.
Any help would be great.
Cheers
To change the NUMBER OF ROWS, go to cell C13 and change the formula to
=SEQUENCE(E6*52)
The chart won't auto-adjust. So you need to adjust the chart's source data range to capture all rows.
Hey man, I really appreciate your contribution, this template is awesome, I am sure it will help me to plane my financial life, and also to pay debts earlier and create wealth.
Thank you!!!
how do i edit this to use months instead of years for term? i have a 90 month loan (7.5 years) that i am trying to use with this and it forces me to use 7 or 8 in years.