Christmas is my favorite festival. It has certain magical feel to it. This year, it is going to be even more special, because we have 2 more hilarious, lovely people to share our joy with, not to mention over 16,000 of you to celebrate it with.
So naturally, I was excited when Fred suggested that we have a contest on this in our forums. So here we go.
What you need to do?
Simple. Make a Christmas greeting card (or any of your favorite festival’s greeting card) using Excel.
How to submit your greeting card for the contest?
Just upload your card to a public file sharing site like skydrive. Or, email it to me with the subject “Christmas Card Contest”. My address is chandoo.d @ gmail.com
What will you get?
You will get a $50 Amazon gift card if your entry is selected as a winner. I have 2 gift cards to giveaway.
Rules & Fine Print:
- Contest is closes on 13th December Midnight Pacific Time.
- You can submit multiple entries.
- Make flashy, jazzy cards using animation, chart effects, cell formatting or whatever fun thing you want.
- Your contest entries will be posted on chandoo.org for anyone to download and play with.
- Winners will be selected by me. (I would love to have a poll, but I also want to send the gift card before Christmas. And polls take time, so…)
- Go!
PS: The lovely Santa’s picture you see above is from Matti Mattila
9 Responses to “Show forecast values in a different color with this simple trick [charting]”
While this works in a pinch, it clearly "lightens" the colors of the entire chart. Depending on where you use this, it will be blatantly obvious that you don't know what you are doing and present a poor looking graph.
Why not separate the data into different segments when charting and have as many colors as you have data points? You might have to create a new legend and/or repeat the chart in "invisible ink", but it would be cleaner and more consistent when new or updated data becomes available.
While I think I agree that doing it "properly" via a second series is preferable, I don't necessarily agree that making the entirety of the "future" (data, gridlines, and even the axis) semi-transparent is "poor looking". I think it could be seen as adding more emphasis to the "future-ness" of the forecast data.
In short, it's another tool for the toolbox, even if it's never needed.
Simply and clever 🙂
Quick & effective, cool. thanks.
I always use the dummy series.
Nice little trick, thanks very much!
Two sets of data better. Control is much better.
You can use the same chart next month to see what is actual and what is forecast.
To use this trick, I think grid lines has to be removed, that will make the graphic much more sharp.
to be honest, i dont understand why there is needed to do this way... in this case horizontal lines will be pale as well. then why a just can't change the color of the line partly???
Great tutorial. Thanks for the tutorial!