First let me tell you that my trip to Maldives has been very successful. I had fun teaching excel, playing in the beach and relaxing. Both Jo and my son also loved the place (we left our daughter in India with my in-laws 🙁 ). We came back on Sunday by noon, Indian time and have slept most of the time since. I am planning to write a detailed travelogue and share my experience of running an Excel workshop. But that will happen only Friday.
Since I have too much backlog work, I am going to use this week for some of the guest posts that are pending for a while.
Excel Holiday Request Form
Theodor, one of our readers, first emailed me in December asking a question. But he also made a promise to share some of his techniques with us thru Guest posts. Naturally, I was too happy and invited him to share a file or two so that I can use them for articles here.
Later during Christmas holidays, he sent me this beautiful Holiday Request Form made using Excel.
What does Holiday Request Form do?
Using this form, employees can request for a holiday (leave / vacation). In Theodor’s words,
As promised, here’s a sample of something just finished – a holiday request form.
Nothing too fancy about it except one thing: because we’ve had repeated hassle with people messing up the date format when entering the “from…. until” dates and as a consequence the =NETWORKDAYS() formula would not work, I locked the cells and allowed them to change the dates via scroll-bars.
And then just to ramp it up a notch, the “calendar” at the bottom would be filled in with an “x” for each day requested. Now that’s a formula that bugged me for a few hours, since it has to do with a number of conditions that are apparently conflicting.
How does it work?
Theodor used various techniques and ideas of Excel that we frequently talk about in Chandoo.org. Some of the most important pieces of the puzzle are,
- Scroll-bar form control is used to select dates
- Conditional formatting is used to show x marks for dates on vacation
- NETWORKDAYS() formula is used to calculate vacation duration (while excluding weekends and national holidays) [more on this formula]
I tried to take some screen-shots of his file, but since the layout is big, the images would not come right. So I made a video (5 min) demonstrating the file. Please watch it to understand how this holiday request form works.
Download Holiday Request Form:
Click here to download the excel workbook. The file is protected with blank password. Unlock it to inspect the formulas and formatting rules.
Thank you Theodor
Thanks to Theodor for teaching me how to link things like conditional formatting, form controls and formulas to create simple yet awesome templates for keeping track of holiday requests etc.
If you like the template, please say thanks to Theodor.
Also, please share ideas and tips on how you would enhance this file.
15 Responses to “Make a Bubble Chart in Excel [15 second tutorial]”
Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!
Whyyyyyyyy?
The idea is to tell how to make a bubble chart. I got an e-mail from a reader recently asking how the scatter bubble is made. So I thought a 15 second tutorial would be a good idea to show this.
Did that email go "Dear Chandoo, I know that you scorn bubble charts, but if I don't do one in Excel for my boss then he'll fire my sorry ass, and my children will have to be sold for medical experiments in order for me to be able to afford the upgrade path to Excel 2010"?
If so, fair enough...it's all in the greater good 😉
Chandoo,
I am using excel 2003 and it is not working. The x axis is not the one that I enter in x axis column. Please help! Thanks.
Sorry, after few attempts, I managed to get the right result. I shouldn't select the title (header) of the table and select only the data to produce the right bubble chart.
What's wrong with bubble charts? Is there a better method for displaying scatter plots with lots of overlapping data points? Don't tell me you'd rather jitter!
@Sanwijay: Cool.
@Precious Roy: There is nothing wrong with bubble charts. Infact, it is the only way to show 3 dimensional data (x,y and sizes) without confusing your audience. Jeff is worried that people might misuse the chart. As with any chart, bubbles also have a place and time for using them.
I recommend using bubble charts to show relative performance various products in several regions and similar situations.
Also, human eye is notorious in wrongly estimating the bubble sizes (as we have to measure areas). See http://chandoo.org/wp/2009/07/28/charting-lessons-from-optical-illusions/
We can partially improve bubble charts by adding data labels, but if you have too many bubbles, the labels will clutter the chart and make it look busy.
I can't seem to find a way to plot more than ten bubbles on a chart and need to know how to add more
@KW.. why would such a thing happen. I am sure you can add more bubbles that that. Can you tell us exactly what you are doing...
Example table:
A B C (size)
Me: 25 30 15%
Him: 30 22 11%
Her: 12 30 20%
I am trying to make a bubble chart where the Y axis is A, the X axis is B, and the size of the bubble is C. There should be only 3 bubbles. I keep ending up with six (with the labels being only "Me" and "Her"). My goal is to have three bubbles, one representing each person. Clearly I am doing something wrong. Can you help explain...?
Hi,
I wanted to add data labels to the bubbles. Each bubble represents a different company name. Excel allows me to add the size, legend, x axis values and y axis values. How do I add instead- Company A, B, C, D for the bubbles?
youon you have to choice every data for every company..
ex:create bubble for A company,after that click right> add data label> adjust data labels :format data labels and choose : series name.
i hop u will succeed .
[...] we create a bubble chart with 2 bubbles. 1 for the actual mustache & 1 for target [...]
If we want bubble size to be controlled by one column, but the bubble labels to be controlled by another column, how can this be achieved?
many thanks!!!!