Form Controls
What Are Form Controls?
Form Controls are objects which you can place onto an Excel Worksheet which give you the functionality to interact with your models data.
You can use these controls on worksheets to help select data. For example, drop-down boxes, list boxes, spinners, and scroll bars are useful for selecting items from a list. Option Buttons and Check Boxes allow selection of various options. Buttons allow execution of VBA code.
By adding a control to a worksheet and linking it to a cell, you can return a numeric value for the current position of the control. You can use that numeric value in conjunction with the Offset, Index or other worksheet functions to return values from lists.
Use below links to quickly learn about Form Controls:
- What are form controls & introduction
- Button Control
- Label Control
- Check box Control
- Option Button Control
- List box Control
- Combo box Control
- Spin Button Control
- Scroll bar Control
- Group box Controlg
- Using Form Controls – techniques & examples
- Other Controls in Excel
Where Are Form Controls?
Form Controls are located on the Developer Tab under Insert Form Control.
PS: If you do not have developer tab, learn how to enable it.
You will notice 2 types of Form Controls, being Form Controls and Active X controls.
This post will only be dealing with Form Controls. The Active X controls, similarities and differences will be discussed towards the end of the post.
How Do I Insert a Form Control
To Insert a Form Control goto the Form Control Menu and click on the Form Control you want to insert.
Now click on the worksheet in the location you want your form control.
Don’t worry about the location or size you can change those later.
What Are The Different Form Controls?
There are several types of Form Controls offering a range of interactivity from a simple display through to interactive controls which allow multiple selection or interactive selection of values.
| Control Name | Description | Function |
| Button | Push Button | Executes a macro |
| Check Box | Allow selection of non-exclusive options | Multiple On/Off options |
| Combo Box | Drop Down selection Box | Select items from a Drop down list |
| Group Box | Layout element which groups common elements | Nil |
| Label | A Text label | Can be static or linked to a cell |
| List Box | Fixed selection box | Select items from a list |
| Option Button | Allow selection of exclusive options | Exclusive Single On/Off option |
| Scroll bar | Allow Horizontal or Vertical scrolling | Increases or decreases a cells value by a fixed amount |
| Spin Button | Increment/decrement a value by a fixed amount | Increases or decreases a cells in steps by a fixed amount |
These are discussed individually below
Form Control Types
Button (Form Control)
The Button Form Control is as its name suggests simply a Button.
Pressing the Button allows execution of a macro.
The Button has no other controls.
Button Text
You can right click on the button and change the buttons Text (Edit Text) and enter the text you want displayed on the button.
The Button’s text can be linked to a cell, select the Button, In the formula Bar enter a link to a cell. eg: =$C$3 and accept. The Button’s text will now change as the contents of the cell C3 change.
You can change the Text Style including Font, Color and Text Direction using the Format Control (Ctrl 1) option.
Assign Macro
Right click on the Button and select Assign Macro
The Assign Macro dialog will pop up.
Select the macro you want to assign to the button.
Label (Form Control)
The Label Form Control is also as its name suggests simply a Label.
The Label will display text either fixed or from a linked cell
You can right click on the button and change the buttons text (Edit Text).
The Button’s text can be linked to a cell, select the Button, In the formula Bar enter a link to a cell
eg: =$C$3 and accept. The Button’s text will now change as the contents of the cell C3 change.
Unlike the Button you cannot change the Text Style, Font, Color or Text Direction.
Typically a label is put in front of another Control to explain or add a title to the control.
Labels would rarely be used on a Worksheet as a label as they have limited text format properties.
Users would be better served using either cell text or a Text Box where full text formatting is allowed.
Labels come into use when setting up custom Dialog Forms which are used by VBA applications for custom data entry or other uses.
Check Box (Form Control)
The Check Box form Control allows selection of a number of non-exclusive options.
That is any number of Check Box controls may be implemented and they independently be on or off and have no relationship to each other.
The Check Box Form Control returns the value indicating its status, either True (selected) or False (not selected), to a linked cell.
To link a Format Control to a cell, Right Click the Format Control and select Format Control…
Option Button (Form Control)
The Option Button form Control allows the selection of an exclusive option from a number of alternatives.
That is only one Option Button Form Control may be selected at a time, the remainder are automatically turned off.
The Option Button Form Control returns the value of the Option Button indicating its status to a linked cell.
In the Example above the Option Buttons are linked to cell E2.
You only need link one Option Button to cell E2, Excel automatically links the remaining option buttons to teh same cell.
Selecting a Different Option Button automatically deselelects the other Option Buttons and changes the linked cells value
List Box (Form Control)
The List box allows the selection of one or more items from a list.
The list is sourced from a Range of cells in the above case it was F2:F17.
The List Form Control returns an Index Number or position of the selected item to the Cell Link, 5 in the example above.
The Input Range and Cell Link are setup by Right Clicking the control and select Format Control…
The Number of items visible in the list box is determined by the size of the list box
If there are more items than will fit in the list box then a scroll bar is automatically added to the list box to enable there selection.
Combo Box (Form Control)
The Combo Box allows the selection of one or more items from a drop down list.
The Combo Box use is similar to the list box except that it has a drop down selection list instead of a fixed length selection list.
The list is sourced from a Range of cells in the example below it was F2:F17.
The List Form Control returns an Index Number or position of the selected item to the Cell Link B10, 9 in the example below.
The Input Range, Cell Link and size of the Drtop Down Box are setup by Right Clicking the control and select Format Control…
Spin Button (Form Control)
The Spin Button is a simple toggle button that allows the increase or decrease of a linked cells value by a certain pre-defined amount.
The Cell Link and Lower, Upper Limits and Step Size parameters are setup by Right Clicking the control and select Format Control…
The Lower, Upper Limits and Step Size must be Integers. If you want to increase a cell by fractional amounts you will need to for example set the range from 0 to 1000 in steps of 1 and then devide the linked cell by 10 which will give a Range of 0 to 100 in steps of 0.1
Scroll Bar (Form Control)
The Scroll Bar Form Control often referred to as a Slider is a simple linear slider that allows the increase or decrease of a linked cells value by sliding a bar either left/right or up/down.
Scroll Bars can be placed either Horizontally or Vertically by dragging the corner.
Scroll bars are incremented by the Step Size by clicking the ends of the bars or dragging the slider or by a Page Jump Size by using Page up[/down or clicking either side of the slider bar.
The Cell Link, Lower, Upper Limits, Incremental Change and Page Change parameters are setup by Right Clicking the control and select Format Control…
The Lower, Upper Limits, Incremental Change and Page Change must be Integers. If you want to increase a cell by fractional amounts you will need to for example set the range from 0 to 1000 in steps of 1 and then devide the linked cell by 10 which will give a Range of 0 to 100 in steps of 0.1
Group Box (Form Control)
The Group Box Form Control isn’t really a Form Control at all, as it allows no interactivity.
What it is used for is grouping similar controls so that functional groups of controls can be maintained and the users flow is directed around a form.
Using the Form Controls
General Use
The use of the information from a form control is limited by your imagination.
Typical uses are
- Selecting items for a chart
- Selecting data sets
- Moving data sets
- Adjusting values in a model
As described in each of the above Form Controls is that the Form Controls do not return a value directly from a list, they all return either a number or an index number relative to the position of the item in a list.
Examples of all the Form Controls and examples of their use can be found in the attached file:
Excel 2003 Examples or Excel 2007+ Examples
or
Have a browse through the dashboards presented during Dashboard Week
or
For some Extreme Examples of Spreadsheet Interactivity using Form Controls and a little bit of VBA code:
Running Macros
Apart from the Button Form Control whose only purpose is to Run Macro’s, all Form Controls can be linked to a Macro.
This is done by Right Clicking on the Form Control and selecting Assign Macro.
It is worth noting that the macro is only executed after the control is released.
EG: If you have a macro linked to a Spin Button, If the Spin Button is held down and hence repeatedly increments its value, the macro will only be executed after the control is released.
Moving and Resizing Form Controls
You can move and resize form controls as with all other worksheet Objects.
Select the form control by right clicking on it
Use the handles to resize or drag the edges to move the controls
Hint: You can use Alt while dragging or resizing to snap the control to cell boundaries.
3D, Printing & Locking Form Controls
You can lock Form Controls as well as enable them to be printed or not
Right Clicking the control and select Format Control…
Use the Size, Protection and Properties Tabs as required.
The 3D option enables a 3D version of the Control instead of a flat control, which can add a bit of sparkle in some instances.
Limitations of Form Controls
Form controls offer a limited set of functions but do those functions very well.
Limitations are Form Controls:
- Form Controls can only increase or decrease by integer numbers
- Form Controls only return the index of an item in a list
- Form Controls have limited format properties (Font, Color etc)
What are the Active X Controls
Active X controls are like Form Controls on Steroids in that they have a much wider range of properties than Form Controls.
They also have much better ties to VBA in terms of programmability and have a number of events that can be accessed programmatically.
The main limitation of Active X controls are that they use a Microsft Active X component. This means that if you are sharing your workbook with an Apple Mac user using Excel for Mac these functions wont be available as Active X isn’t avilable on that Platform.
Workbooks with Form Controls will happily work on a an Apple Mac.
Other Controls Available in Excel
A number of other Excel objects can be used to add interactivity to your worksheets.
Shapes
These include:
- Shapes
- Charts
- Text Boxes
- Word Art
All these can have macro’s linked to them which effectively act the same as a Button Form Control without the moving button effect.
A stunning example of using Text Boxes was recently posted at: The Grammy Bump Chart
Where the Artists Stats Box (Top Left of Chart) is using several Text Boxes linked to cells to show the Selected Artsists Statistics.
HyperLinks
Inserting Hyperlinks at stratgic locations throughout worksheets provides a great way to simplify navigation around pages and between pages
Other Links
Where have you used Form Controls ?
Where have you used Form Controls?
Let us know in the comments below:
39 Responses to “Make a Quick Thermometer Chart to Compare Targets and Actuals”
You'll probably have some readers insist on bullet charts, which in my experience are no easier to read.
Note on the case where actuals may exceed targets, the target has to be the second series in the chart, not the first, so it appears in front of the actual.
@Jon.. good point. And yes, readers are already saying bullets are the way to go. Atleast @dmgerbino said it on twitter: http://twitter.com/dmgerbino/status/6761754333
But I feel the same as you did. Bullets need orientation to get started and not that easy to construct (here is a tutorial btw... http://chandoo.org/wp/2008/07/21/dashboard-bullet-graphs-excel/ )
When you just have to compare 2 sets of values, a chart like above is good and easy enough.
And yes, thank you for saying that data series order should be correct to show the target on top.
I think bullet charts are a good alternative. I'm not a huge fan of the formatting that you used above where the outline is so thick.
Another option would be to combine a line graph (plan/goal amounts) with the columns (actual) and select the option to remove the line. This leaves just the value (marker), which can be increased in size to leave only a line about the size of the bar. It's an easy and cleaner way to show actual to plan/goal. Does that make sense?
Tony -
I would use columns (or area) for goal, and lines and markers for actual.
What about if you go over the target? The chart doesn't work so well then.
The technique described today is a near bullet chart. As I stated early this morning on Twitter (link: http://bit.ly/4K3yPM ) , I am a fan of Stephen Few's Bullet Graph.
Hubert Urruttia and I started with Charlie Kyd's method, but as Jon Peltier and Chandoo said, they are not easy to contruct. We moved onto prototyping with Fabrice Rimlinger's SPARKLINES FOR EXCEL and now use XLCube's (BonaVista) Micro Chart tool. Both of these tools allow you to create bullet charts just as easy as any Excel chart type.
As far as reading and interpreting them, this chart type has been the easiest for us to present.
There are many chart types. Today's "Make a Quick Thermometer Chart to Compare Targets and Actuals" is fine for a start, but your ultimate goal should be to create Bullet Graphs. AS Stephen Few states in his overview, "The bullet graph was developed to replace the meters and gauges that are often used on dashboards. Its linear and no-frills design provides a rich display of data in a small space, which is essential on a dashboard. Like most meters and gauges, bullet graphs feature a single quantitative measure (for example, year-to-date revenue) along with complementary measures to enrich the meaning of the featured measure. Specifically, bullet graphs support the comparison of the featured measure to one or more related measures (for example, a target or the same measure at some point in the past, such as a year ago) and relate the featured measure to defined quantitative ranges that declare its qualitative state (for example, good, satisfactory, and poor). Its linear design not only gives it a small footprint, but also supports more efficient reading than radial meters."
@dmgerbino
Since @dmgerbino had to bring my name up I guess I should throw in my two cents.
@dmgerbino and I have both implemented Bullet Charts with great success. What is most interesting about this fact is that we have had a harder time implementing Sparklines than Bullet Charts. The reason for this revolves around the simple fact of familiarity. I will explain. People look at a Sparkline and they think it is a really small Line Chart and it is not. People are familiar with Line Charts since they have been around since 1786 when they were created by William Playfair. Bullet Charts on the other hand are different so they almost demand an explanation. Because of this there was a lot of face time that was needed to explain these charts but once people got them they understood the concept. This is similar to when I introduced Cycle Plots http://bit.ly/87ydVG (Thank you @nbrgraphs!) or Horizon Charts http://bit.ly/6PVavj.
Now about the Thermometer Charts… The first thing I want to address is Tony Rose’s statement. I totally agree that the outline on the chart is too think. It might come of as being a whole new series or a new variable. What I have done in instances like this is I have created a Bar Graph and Scatter Plot mixture. Then I have turned off the Data Series on the Scatter Plot and turned on the Horrizontal Error Bars on the Scatter Plot. The new horizontal line stands for the Plan and the Bar is the actual. The reason why I find this more useful is because this technique works if you have exceeded plan. Actually, I do not understand how Chandoo’s method would display the data if Plan is surpassed.
This reminds me of another blog post that @dmgerbino, @Jon_Peltier, and myself commented on over a year ago. http://bit.ly/PNdO Actually, I talk about similar things in regards to familiarity to charting techniques.
- @hubert_urruttia
[...] we have a post on using thermometer charts to quickly compare actual values with targets. Today we follow up the post with 10 charting ideas you can use to compare actual values with [...]
Hi Chandoo
How do I increase the width of the bar chart and also make the long axis labels come in the same line?
Thank you,
Rajiv
@Rajiv
Select the outer part of the chart "Chart Area" and note the cursor will change to arrows
drag the edges to what ever size you want
You can hold the Alt key as you drag and the chart will snap to the cell boundaries
Now click on the chart area inside the chart "Plot Area" and note that a box with small circles appears around it
drag the circles on the edge of that box to suit
You can hold the Alt key as you drag and the chart will snap to the cell boundaries
@ Hui
Thank you for your comments. But my question was not for the "Plot Area" instead I wanted to know about how should I increase the width of the individual bar charts because with my data all the individual bars are coming to be thin and I want to make them appear broader.
Thank You
@Rajiv
Right click on the Series you want to change and select Format Data Series
Under Series Options goto Gap Width and decrease it to suit
[...] Make a Quick Thermo-meter Chart using Excel [...]
Thank you for the great chart and explanation!
How do I show two amounts (Signed Revenue and Pipeline) as stacked within the Target amount?
@CL... you can use stacked column charts and follow the same technique to get this. See attached file for an example - http://img.chandoo.org/playground/thermo-meter-with-additional-details.xlsx
Chandoo - thanks for the quick response! What if I want the data label for the pipeline to be the actual pipeline value, not the signed rev + pipeline value? i.e. 15 instead of 55
Thanks!
How would i do this in excel 2003?
[...] Thermo-meter charts are very good to show how actual value compares with target (or budget). But how can we add another point for say Last Year value to the chart with out cluttering it. [...]
Hi Guys,
As Matt said,
"What if you if you go over the target?"
Is there a way to make it change color? or at least to show what the target was?
I am planning to use this with a "Forecasted vs Real" production chart but I do not know how to show overproduction.
Any clue?
Thanks
How do I do this if I have 2 bars I want side-by-side? ie 2012 Mean with 2012 benchmark overlapping and then 2013 mean with 2013 benchmark overlapping? I want the 2012 and 2012 mean bars sie by side to compare multiple categories.
Sorry, I meant to say the 2012 and 2013 mean bars side by side
I have a problem in that my PM wants a chart that shows a stacked column (Labor and Expense) and then have the overall buget shown as a thermo.
Everytime I try to do this, I either end up with all three being stacked or all of them being seperated.
Help?
Or if someone knows how to only outline the top and sides of a chart series....then I would have this solved. (Make a stacked column with labor, expenses, and remaining budget, then clear the fill and outline only the top and sides.) I just can't figure out how to do that/ not sure if excel will let me only outline part of a chart series.
[...] Thermometer chart to show budget vs. actual performance [...]
Your home is valueble for me. Thanks!...
I've created the thermometer chart as the Chandoo tutorial described. How do I move my columns closer together? I don't want wider columns; I want to move my narrow columns closer together. Thank you!
Dear Elite members,
could you please let me informed whether we could incorporate color formating in this thermometer approach i.e. if my actual performance is <Min then meter color sud go Red, in between min & target it sud change to Amber & target and above sud change to Green. pls advise. thanks,
I think the only way to do that would be with VBA programming.
@Abhinav
Yes, Simply use a stacked column chart, colored appropriately
Or
You may also want to read about Bullet Charts
@ Hui,
Could you pls demonstrate this with the help of an example.
let's have the below sample data
Actual=12
Min=10
Target=15
Max=20
if Actual>=Min then bar color sud be Red
in between Min & Target= Amber
between target(inclusive) & Max = Green
greater than or equal to Max= Blue
Thanks in advance
Abhi
Great blog post with awesome sample data. I've implemented two of the top "power tips" by changing the colour of the actual values, AND setting Actual to be 40% transparent. Looking good.
[…] easy with these charts. Use them sparingly. As a rule a thermo-meter chart would be better (easy to make, takes less space, scalable) for situations like […]
[…] easy with these charts. Use them sparingly. As a rule a thermo-meter chart would be better (easy to make, takes less space, scalable) for situations like […]
I recently purchased the template bundle and love the ease of use - thank you!
I would like to ask if it is possible to add an important 'block' to the dashboard to illustrate an important status for my executive team; 'billing status'? (ie budget / amount billed) something like that?
Thank you!
@Cheif449.. Thanks for your purchase and kind words.
You can add this easily to the dashboard. Follow below steps.
1. Unprotect the dashboard worksheet.
2. Add a text box (Insert > Drawing Shapes) to the dashboard
3. Put any text inside it as per your need.
4. Format it as needed.
5. Protect the dashboard again.
How do you do this in Excel 2010 - I am not seeing that option in Format data series.
how would we check target and actual sale for multiple years
Select any of the bar, right click and format data series