Yesterday, we have seen a beautiful example of how showing details (like distribution) on-demand can increase the effectiveness of your reports. Today, we will learn how to do the same in Excel.
Before jumping in to the tutorial,
In this post, I have explained one technique of using charts + VBA to dynamically show details for a selected item. There are 4 other ways to do the same – viz. using cell comments, pivot charts, group / un-group feature and hyperlinks. I have made a 45 minute video training explaining all the 5 techniques in detail. Plus there an Excel workbook with all the techniques demoed. You can get both of these for $17.
Click here to get the video training – Showing on-demand details in Excel
How does the on-demand details chart work – demo:
This is a replica of yesterday’s chart from Amazon. When you click on any cell inside the Items + Rating table, the corresponding items review break-up is shown in the chart aside.
Creating this chart in Excel – Step-by-step Instruction
So you are ready to learn how to do this chart? Great, grab a cup of coffee or tea and get started.
1. Understanding the data
This is how I have setup the source data for the chart. It has 3 columns – Item name, Reviewer ID and Rating. Each item has several ratings from several different reviewers. And our goal is to summarize all these ratings.
All this data is in the range Table1. We will use structured references [what are they?] in formulas to keep them readable.
2. Setting up the Item & Rating Table
The first step is to show a table with all the products we sell and their corresponding average rating. We will then add the circle indicators at the end to visually show the rating.
Calculating the averages using AVERAGEIF() formula:
The formula is quite simple. Assuming the product names are in C5:C13,
We just write =AVERAGEIF(Table1[Item],C5,Table1[Rating]) for first product’s average. Fill the rest by dragging the formula down.
Displaying Circles:
There are no star symbols in the default fonts. But we have circles – a full circle, an empty circle and a donut to indicate half-circle. These symbols are available in Wingdings 2 font. We will use an incell chart to display the circles. Assuming the rating is 2.83, we need to print 2 full circles, one donut and 2 empty circles. [related: inserting symbols in to Excel workbooks]
The formula is quite simple. Since the ratings are in D5:D13, the formula becomes,
=REPT(fullCircleSymbol,INT(D5)) & REPT(donutSymbol,(INT(D5)<>D5)+0) & REPT(emptyCircleSymbol,INT(5-D5))
Naming this grid
Now that we are done with the rating grid, let us name it – rngReviews.
3. Finding out which cell is selected
Now comes the macro part.
Before jumping in to the code, take a sip of that coffee. It is getting cold.
When a user selects any cell inside rngReviews, we need to findout which product it is so that we can load corresponding details.
The macro logic is quite straight forward.
- On Worksheet_SelectionChange, check if the ActiveCell overlaps with rngReviews
- If so,
- findout the relative row number of ActiveCell with respect to topmost row in rngReviews (ie the position of selected cell inside rngReviews)
- Put this value in to a cell on worksheet – say E28
The macro code can be found in the downloaded workbook. Here is an image of macro code.
4. Using the macro output to drive…,
We need to use the value E28 to do 2 things.
- Highlight the corresponding row in the rngReviews using conditional formatting.
- Findout the corresponding product using INDEX formula.
I am leaving both of these to your imagination.
5. Calculating Product – Rating Breakup
In order to show details for the product, we must calculate the corresponding breakup of ratings (ie how many 1 star, 2 star … 5 star reviews the product got).
I am leaving the formulas for this to your imagination. But when you are done, make sure your output looks like this:
(hint: use COUNTIFS formula).
6. Create a Chart to show Rating Break-up
This is the last one before we put everything together. Just follow below 5 steps.
- Select the 3 columns – Rating type, number of reviews, total reviews and create a bar chart (not stacked bar chart). In my workbook, this data is in the range C29:E34 in the sheet “Rating Summary”.
- Reverse the order of categories as Excel shows them upside down. For this select the vertical axis and hit CTRL+1 (or go to axis options from right click menu). Here check the “Show categories in reverse order” option. Also remove the chart legend.
- Set both series of the chart such that they completely overlap each other [image]. Adjust the gap width to 50%. Also, adjust the order of the series from Chart’s source data options [image].
- Remove grid lines, axis line and horizontal axis. Format the chart colors to your pink and translucent green (really!).
- Re-size the chart, add title, add labels, remove border. You need to use dynamic titles.
7. Put everything together
Now is the time to put everything together and test. Move the chart close to the rating table. Test it by clicking on any value inside table.
You can also do some colorful formatting if you prefer.
Finish the coffee and show-off the chart to a colleague or boss. Bask in glory.
Download Example Workbook – On-demand Details in Excel
Click here to download the workbook with this example. Play with it to understand how this chart works.
Note: You must enable macros to use the file.
Note2: If the file does not open on double-click, just open Excel (2007 or above) and drag the file inside to Excel.
Learn this + 4 other techniques using Video Training,
In this post, I have explained one technique of using charts + VBA to dynamically show details for a selected item. There are 4 other ways to do the same – viz. using cell comments, pivot charts, group / un-group feature and hyperlinks. I have made a 45 minute video training explaining all the 5 techniques in detail. Plus there an Excel workbook with all the techniques demoed. You can get both of these for $17.
Click here to get the video training – Showing on-demand details in Excel
How do you like this chart?
Ever since I learned this technique from a good friend, I have been using it in dashboards & complex models to make them more user friendly.
What about you? Did you like this technique? Where are you planning to use it? Please share your views & ideas using comments.
More Resources to One-up your Chart Awesomeness
Want more, here is more:
23 Responses to “Displaying Text Values in Pivot Tables without VBA”
Its possible to display up to 4 text values.
Have a look at the screen shot of an example that I had posted way back at the EHA and figure out how its done !
http://tinypic.com/r/muzywk/6
With Excel 2010 you can use Conditional Formatting to apply custom number formats which can display text. (In older versions you can only modify text color and cell background color, but not number formats.) Using CF allows for an even larger number of different display values.
[...] Display text values in Pivot Tables without VBA [...]
Hey,
Thanks, this helps. But how do you do it for multiple values where there is a huge amount of non repeating text?
@Soumya
The only way to do more than 4 values is to make the Pivot Table manually with formulas, of course then it isn't a Pivot table
You can of course do it with VBA
You may want to have a look at this description of how to do it here: http://www.clearlyandsimply.com/clearly_and_simply/2011/06/emulate-excel-pivot-tables-with-texts-in-the-value-area-using-vba.html
@Soumya
The only way to do more than 4 values is to make the Pivot Table manually with formulas, of course then it isn’t a Pivot table
You can of course do it with VBA
You may want to have a look at this description of how to do it here: http://www.clearlyandsimply.com/clearly_and_simply/2011/06/emulate-excel-pivot-tables-with-texts-in-the-value-area-using-vba.html
[...] Pivot Tables take tables of data and allow the user to summarise and consolidate the data at the same time. This is a great and very fast method of analysis but is restricted to handling mathematical functions on the value field resulting in numerical summaries. – read more [...]
[…] Read more here: Displaying Text Values in Pivot Tables without VBA […]
There is a very good way actually for handling text inside values area.
First you create a special column on the very left side and call it ID, and put unique ID (numbers only), and then create a pivot table with:
Row Labels and Column labels as you like, and in the Values labels use the unique ID number.
Move the unique ID number (copy paste) somewhere to the right and use vlookup to load the data you need using the ID as reference.
It is a bit longer way but for me it works perfectly to combine values as you like in any moment.
hope helps.
Regards,
Jon
Thank you! I finally understand pivot tables thanks to your clear, concise explanations and examples.
Good Day. This is exactly what i have been looking for. However when i try it on my pivot table or even when i try to recreate this exercise using the sample worksheet, i get this error:
"Microsoft Excel cannot use the number format you typed. Try using one of the built-in number formats."
Same thing here, Excel quite did not like the format in my PowerPivot. Any clues as to what may be going on? Thanks.
I have the same thing happening on my end. I'm running a normal pivot table on a .xlsm file.
@Danzi
What format did you use?
can you post the file ?
pls. help in table there is name, pan. amount. i have to make pivot table for example
NAME PAN AMOUNT
MR.X AAAAC1254T 500.00
MR.Y AAABR1258C
MR.A CFVDE2458T
MR.Z AAVCR12548C
MR.X AAAAC1254T
MR.Z AADCD245T
pls. help in table there is name, pan. amount. i have to make pivot table for example
NAME PAN AMOUNT
MR.X AAAAC1254T 500.00
MR.Y AAABR1258C 1000
MR.A CFVDE2458T 2000
MR.Z AAVCR12548C 5451
MR.X AAAAC1254T 45564
MR.Z AADCD245T 4500
how to get pivot tabe so i get PAN no. against Name.
I found an easy way to get text values in pivot table.
I create an other worksheet in wich each cell has a formula that copy the pivot table. The trick is that the formula does a lookup for the numbers in the pivot table.
The formula looks like that:
=IF(ISNUMBER(table!A1);VLOOKUP(table!A1;Code!$A$1:$B$65;2);IF(ISBLANK(table!A1);" ";table!A1))
Code is a worksheet where there is a liste of text /numbers correspondance.
As a bonus The new sheet is easier to format
Additional trick:
In my case, i encoded differents codeid with a power(2, codeId-1) so that summing then is equivalent to concatenate them.
1-A
2-B
4-C
8-D
yields :
5 - AC
14 - BCD
Hi
I want to ask if pivot can display dates in pivot field. As in a column i have customers and in row different items i want to know there last purchase date. anyone help in this??
Hello Guys, Need your help
I am doing some analysis of the cycle time of the product i.e how much time a product takes from manufacturing to the central warehouse.
I have batch numbers for the product and against them i have to pull out the diff. dates
Like the base date is from where the manufacturing start. So i have the batch number,against it's manuf. date. Now i have to pull out the date when it was quality released.
I have the quality released data but the data have duplicates, like i will have two dates or may be three for the same batch. So my main objective is to pull out the date which is latest among them.
BATCH NO. DATE of Mfg. DATE of Quality release
A1 12/4/2014 (HERE I HAVE TO PULL value)
Next Sheet
BATCH NO. DATE of Quality Release
A1 14/5/2014
a2 23/5/2016
A1 12/5/2014
A1 13/6/2014
From this sheet i have to pull up the latest date format of date here is dd/mm/yyy
TIA
[…] needed to present text instead of counts in a pivot table value column. Here is an excellent resource for Excel manipulation, in addition to an overview of pivot […]
This is great thank you.
Wow!!! Excellent!! It helped me a lot.
I am developing training tracking sheet for 200 employees with training completed date. Each employee will be attending 25 courses. How to indicate actual dates in pivot table value field.