Did you know that MS Excel has a hidden, life altering Easter egg? This is a story of how I found it and discovered joy. Read on.
Almost an year ago, I have quit my job with one of the leading IT companies in the world, to embark on an uncertain but very exciting journey. I have started my own business around MS Excel – creating & selling awesome Excel products & training programs [visit our online store].
This is a continuation of the Chandoo.org Start-up Story posted around the same time last year. Grab a cup of coffee and read it in leisure. Do not expect any Excel tips. 🙂
[PS: if you are new to Chandoo.org, Read this and this before reading this post.]
What is it like to run a small business
When I wanted to leave a stable & well-paying job & start a business several things bothered me. What if my business never picks up? What if I do not generate enough money to sustain my family? What if I grow complacent & make mistakes? What if I get bored or lonely or get demotivated? What if I cannot handle the thousand little things that go in to running a business?
They say, leap and a net will appear. And leap I did. And just as if a switch is turned on, I found answers to all my doubts one by one. I discovered the joy in running a small business around my passion. I made mistakes, but I kept learning. I found help from friends. I made new friendships. I learned how to reduce, automate, outsource areas of work that are not critical. I hired people to help me with customer service & emails. And not one moment, I felt tired, bored or demotivated. In fact, I feel excited every single day about what I am doing.
How is my business doing?
Here is a quick summary of the business:
(April 2010 to March 2011)
- Total paying customers: 2,175 (Repeat customers: 175)
- Revenues: ~$200,000
- Top products – Excel School (743), PM Templates (1148), Dashboard Training (199)
- Consulting clients – Microsoft, Wao Marketing, eNor and more.
- Speaking & Training – Office 2010 Launch Event, International Excel Workshop @ Maldives
- Total Visitors to Chandoo.org – 2.5 Mn
- Visitors who spent more than 15 minutes on site – 787,000
- Number of comments received – 7,790
- Number of articles written – 217
- Press Coverage – MSN, Economic Times etc.
What did I learn in one year of doing this?
Many things. Hardly a week goes by without picking up some new skill or idea. But the most important things have to be,
It is not risky: I had this notion of taking huge risk by leaving a plush job. But then, the risk magically disappeared on day 2. Instead, I see immense opportunity for fun, knowledge, satisfaction and profit. All of which were not possible with my day job beyond certain extent. [Related: Is it scary to start?]
It does not take 80 hours per week: During the first 6 months, I used to work a lot. Most of the time I was inefficient. Then, I analyzed my time (in Excel, what else) and found that I could reduce the number of hours spent on e-mail and other activities to focus on what I love most – Excel, interacting with people and sharing new ideas. Now, I am spending <6 hours per day and I am happy with the results.
You need a supportive family: At least once a day, my son or daughter would walk up to my office-cum-guest-bedroom and knock on the doors, often violently, and scream – “daddy, da.” (meaning, Come out Daddy). Although, my heart would race to go out and hug them, I would say no and continue working.
There were days, when Jo (my wife) would feel lonely as I was locked inside the office room for a product launch or marathon recording session or crafting a dashboard etc.
But, thankfully, I have an understanding wife. So, they would be all smiles when I walk out. Also, I have learned to structure my working hours around my kids sleeping hours. For eg. I would get up at 4AM to do recording.
Saying NO is 100 times tougher than saying YES: While I feel immensely thankful for the growth in my business, it has also bought in a new challenge. There were too many opportunities. So many more than I can handle. I get requests for consulting, training, product development, testing, collaboration and more. Initially I used to say YES to everyone. Soon, I had a pipeline of things to do, with no clear plan on when I will finish everything. Then, I started being picky. I started accepting consulting work for projects which are challenging. I started collaborating with one company at a time. This reduced the workload. But the challenge of saying NO is so much more than YES.
Taking it easy is not so easy: When this blog was my side-business, I used to take it very easily. But during the initial months of making the switch, it was hard for me to take this easily. I would freak-out when my site went down, when a customer dis-liked my product or when I get an email with “Urgent” in the subject.
I learned to slow down things. For eg. I reduced the number of posts per week from 5 to 3. I also roped in more people. Hui, Paramdeep & a few guest authors to write on this blog. Ravindra to help me with emails & customer service. Naturally, this restored my sense of humor and ability to learn new things.
Ask and you shall receive: This is the most important lesson. I used to worry whether anyone would purchase my training or products. But then I realized that by just asking you to purchase, you would consider it. This is how I was able to generate revenues from Excel School, PM Templates and other products.
What next?
I am excited about the way my business has turned out. While I generally avoid from making long-term plans, here are a bunch of things I would continue to do,
- I would like to grow this business slowly and learn new things all along.
- I will continue to share my knowledge, mistakes and ideas with you.
- I will spend a great deal of time with Jo and kids. I love taking long walks with Jo, playing with kids.
- I like connecting with people all around the world and will continue to do so.
- I will continue making awesome products, training programs.
- We (our family) will continue to spend less, live meaningfully and give back a portion of what we make to society.
- I will continue to treat you, my dear reader, as my top-most priority.
Wishing you a happy Easter
I found an Easter egg in Excel. Instead of finding it on Easter day, I find it everyday. And I feel excited, fulfilled, grateful & honored.
I wish you will find your Easter egg. It might be in your profession, hobby, religion or community. I wish you will discover the same joy as I did and continue to spread it.
And if you have already found it, then I feel very happy for you.
Thank you.
Easter Egg photo from tillwe.
65 Responses to “Make Dynamic Dashboards using Pivot Tables & Slicers [Video & Download]”
WOW, is all I can say.
I could not have imagined a dynamic dashboard without getting approved software budget and a team of people involved to create it. Given that I am a relative newbie to excel and actually got here by looking for pivit table help, I imagine that i would not be able to make anything myself. But armed with the demo excel sheet I will press buttons (and I will report back how that went;-)
Claudia
Good stuff Chandoo, thanks
The slicer buttons take up quite a bit of room on the dashboard
Is there a way to make the buttons smaller so we can have more room for charts, tables, and commentary?
Kind regards,
Winston
You can resize the slicers! When you click the slicers you can change the height and width of columns and slicers. You can also, under slicer style click "New slicer style" where you can define your own style, which enables you to change most things, including font size.
I hadn't seen the Group Option used as you did for the Duration PivotTable. And thanks for showing how to remove the Field Buttons on a PivotChart, I loathe them with all my heart.
Fantastic design and a great dashboard.
@Claudia.. I am glad you like it. Do let us know how your adventures go.
@Winston: You can resize slicers or increase the number of columns inside. Unfortunately, we can not readjust the font sizes in slicers. So when you resize, you will see partial text.
@Gregory: Thank you. I am happy you like it 🙂
Hi Chandoo, your dashboards are really professional and simple. I do have some question, if I have the following scenario, could you help to advise : -different data sources eg monthly
-calculations percentile
-%difference between financial year
Thank you so much!
Hi,
Thanks for your great information.It has helped me a lot.
Now,I can build my excel addin for Excel 2010 better with your tips.
Hi chandoo i am new reader for ur site.and really found good stuff and temp. But i suggest u 2 put a guidance step sheet in temp so anyone can understand easily.and also help me to become awesome as ur noume.
[...] [Related: Dynamic Dashboard using Pivot Tables & Slicers] [...]
Chandoo, Wow these are very powerful reports. I will be implementing them straight away. It will save me hours of work. Thankyou so much.
Hi Chandoo,
I love the Slicer, but how do I link a slicer for different data sheets e.g.: Client data on one tab and products on another tab, as I find that as long as you use pivot tables off the same data you can link the Pivot tables using Slicer connections.
Regards
Paul
I appreciate the work you have posted on your website - very informative and easy to understand. I just wanted to inform you that you can make selections within the slicer too by using Ctrl and selecting the fields you want to group and use as filter.
I had a question regarding the data used in pivot tables. Is there a way to update the data (eg. a new customer entry) and have the pivot tables and the linked charts in dashboard automatically update? I will search for the answer in other posts so ignore if you have covered it elsewhere.
Thanks again and keep up the good work.
-Vivek
Dear All,
Me too is a die hard fan of Slicer. it's requirement was arise when management is feeling it difficult to juggle with filters for sales of a particular location, Product Category in Pivot Table.
Got very positive response when introduced to tackle the above situation. furthermore in slicer setting there would be option to enable or disable deleted data is handy for particular scenario.
These are eye catching color themes would be like icing on the cake.
There is one more feature of excel 2010 which proves to be tool for great time saving is "Repeat Labels" in Pivot Tables.
This is fantastic!! Your steps were super to easy follow. I can't wait to show my new dashboard off to the boss. Thank you so much!
This might be a little unrelated but I'd like to know which software was used to record your on screen actions? I'd like to use it for tutorials on models that I build for my customers. Thanks!
@Van
Have a look here: http://chandoo.org/wp/about/what-we-use/
The slicers are coming in a sorted order... How can i get it in the way it appears in my original data.... The settings show to sort them A to Z or the other way round but they are option boxes and can not be unchecked... What are my options????
[...] Using slicers to make a dynamic dashboard in Excel [...]
I watched the video and then worked through an example of my own, also telephone costs by coincidence. It took me about 30 minutes to do everything. Once you've understood the basics of pivot tables and slicers, all that limits you is your imagination!
The only thing missing from the video is now to change the number of columns in a slicer: Right click a slicer then Size and Properties, Position and Layout, Layout, Number of Columns ...
Good page and video.
Duncan
How do you insert 'Year' in the Pivot Table Field List if it doesnt exist in the Master table???
Thanks
Hi,
Can I disable the multi-selection of the slicer to only allow one selection at a time?
Thanks in Advance
@Manu.. as of Excel 2013, this is not supported yet. But you can remove slicer heading, clear filter button and style it so that it looks like a single selection. You can also use Macros to ignore previous selection upon multiple selection, but I would not recommend it.
For an example on styling see - Interactive Pivot Calendar
Awesome guide! The dashboard I made blew people away. I do have one question. I want the chart title to match what I have selected. How can I do this without writing macros?
@Devin
Lets say what you have selected in in A1
Select the Chart then Select the Title
Click in the Formula Bar and type =A1
enter or click the small arrow to the left of the Formula Bar
Enjoy
Love the slicers and use them often in my dashboards. Question about the data (specifically the date) I see the "date of call" column but was wondering how were you able to filter on slicers by year and month when there is only a date of call entered into the data?
Thanks for your help!
Thanks for taking the time to create this interesting and very useful tutorial!
I was able to create a similar dashboard in a short time after watching your tutorial. The problem I am having now is how to update the pivot tables and dashboard graphs when a change is made in the raw data. I tried two methods; Change data Source and Refresh. When I used Change Data Source (Options-> Change data source) the values in the pivot tables didn't update. When I tried refresh the values in the pivot tables disappeared as well as the information in the graphs, since the data in the pivot tables no longer existed.
I have been searching for a solution for a while now but I have unfortunately not been able to solve this problem yet. Any help someone can provide is GREATLY appreciated.
All the best
Hi, looks great, but how valuable is power view when it comes to financial data? I've been having trouble trying to visualize how I would use power view to report of financial data.
Hi Chandoo, you are awesome! Thanks for the good work!
there is duplication for my slicer, probably cause i choose date, time as my options. i changed it to date but still theres a duplication of the same date
Just Great! Thank you for the time to put this together and teach us.
Alex Cardoso from Indaiatuba, Brazil.
First of all I would like to thank you guys for this post I used this amazing tool with the help of your tutorial to create a dashboard for one single account and my regional manager said "good job, it looks very profesional" she was so impresed that now she wants one daschboard with all the acounts and services she is going to replace her KPI reports with my report !! I smell a promotion!! My demand was a new laptop with MS 2010 and it was granted. now I have allot of work and many many questions to post .. kudos
Hi Chandoo
I want to say thanks first because i loved ur tutorials
i have a small doubt how to insert slicer from external connections
i searched every where could you please explain how to insert a slicer from external source
@Krishna Prasad
use external source data as pivot table then you will be able to use slicer.
Hello Chandoo,
How to get rid of the > items in Months slicer?
They are appearing when there is a grouping on the date field in pivot
Thanks
Hi Chandoo,
One problem always bothers me when i use slicer. I have no idea aobut how to change the number format in slicer. Want to display number in slicer as general format, but it always displays other number format such as date.
I check my source data and it doesn't effect the number format.
Look forward you or any EXPERTS to solve it. Thanks very much!
In the end, This website is awesome!!!
Hi Emma,
Were you able to resolve your query? I have a similar problem. I use Excel 2013 and the field I'm dropping into the slicer is a currency field ($1.00, $1.05, $1.10 etc.) representing the exchange rates that the user can choose from. The items in the slicer revert back to general format (1, 1.05, 1.1, etc.) although the source field is formatted as currency field. Is there a way to fix this?
@Sunil & Emma: You can create a new column in your raw data which has currency as text, using the TEXT formula like this =TEXT(currency_val, "$#,##.00"). Use this column to create the slicer.
Thanks for the response Chandoo. It works as you suggested. However, if the users were to pick more than one item in the window I'd like to know what is the max value and utilise that value in a DAX formula.
Also... there is no issue if I were to throw a slicer over a normal pivot. The trouble comes when I choose the 'Add this data to the Data Model' option which I need for the PowerPivot.
Hi Chandoo (Or others)
Is there a way to make the color change, when the value changing after the use of a slicer?
Lets say the value is 4,5, when i press the slicer, and the value change to 3,5 i would like the color to change. Can anyone help?
Thank you.
Hi Chandoo,
It was very useful video for me. Thanks.
But I have one question to ask.
How can I connect data which is growing in size (rows, records) by time (daily, monthly etc.) to this kind of dashboard?
Or it is only on select number of data?
Thank you.
Chandoo zindabad!
Hi Chandoo,
I have been able to create something similar quite easily. The problem that I am facing is that I want to keep the Top 10 filters permanently. If I select one option and then clear the filter, the chart removes the Top 10 filter; I want it to go back to Top 10 filter.
Is there a solution to this problem?
Regards
Thanks a lot for the tutorial and for the demo file!
I have the same problem of Angela: after clearing the filter applyed on P1, the filter on P1 shows all the customers without filtering top 10 (as it was before).
Thanks!
Federico
Go to your pivot table, right-click and choose "pivot table options." On the "Totals & Filters" tab check "Allow multiple filters per field."
Justin, thank you so much!
now after clearing the filter applyed on P1, the filter on P1 shows again top 10 customers.
[…] Slicers – how to use them – case study […]
Chandoo!
Just find out your website, I´ll follow your tutorials from now, very useful!
Great thanks from Brazil!!!
Very useful. Learned a new skill today. Thanks a ton!
Hi Chandoo,
This is fantastic! It's going to really help me with some operational reports I develop regularly. Two questions I'm hoping you can answer for me:
1. How can I use one slicer to manipulate two different pivot charts that came from two different pivot tables?
2. If I have a slicer in an excel and share that with someone who is on older versions of Excel - what will it look like to them?
thanks!
Hello Chandoo!
I love the dashboards and have been able to make quite a few, my puzzle is when I am connecting the pivot charts to the slicers, I have to do each individual one and check every single slicer (usually I have about 12, so I end up having to check the 12 check boxes 12 times to connect everything) am I missing something? Is there an easier way to do this?
Thanks!
elisa
Hello Chandoo,
You make my life easier, am in love withe the slicers!
I greatly appreciate
Thanx
Hama
[…] Slicers. Easy for me to do, but not as easy to explain how I did it. Fortunately, Chandoo has a Make Dynamic Dashboards using Pivot Tables & Slicers video and download that will do the job nicely. Suffice it to say it took me <3 minutes to put […]
thank you very much..... 🙂
You are a legend!! Thank you so much - very clear, very helpful indeed.
nice player...
i like to play like chandoo sir.
i learn somthing about slicer by watching posts.
it was too difficult to watch and easy to prepare..
thank you boss.
God Bless You
Hi,
I've built a dashboard on Excel 2010 using Pivot tables and slicers.
What I would like to do now is duplicate the dashboard on another tab, having it extract from another data source (format is identical to the 1st data source).
I'm extracting the same metrics, but each data sources measure different product lines.
Could anyone help me out?
Thanks in advance,
M
@M
Can you please post the question at the Chandoo.org Forums
http://forum.chandoo.org/
Please attach a sample file for a quicker more targeted response
Thank you so much. I learned so much about the slicer because of the video. Just got a quick question. Say I got 100+ Customer name bottons in one of the slicer, and it is time consuming to scroll up and down to find the one to select. Is there anyway I can set in the slicer setting that when I type "E", it automatically take the selectionto to where all the "E" starts? Thanks
Hi there,
This looks great - is there a way I can use it to compare vs budget, forecast? Is it just a case of renaming one of the field Comparison with the data being "Actual, Budget, Forecast"?
Thanks!
hello master!
please help me.
i am looking for many file example for Dashboard, but because my English is weak i couldnt fint it in hear.
please help me.
thankyou so much.
@An
Goto: http://chandoo.org/wp/welcome/
Have a look under dashboards http://chandoo.org/wp/excel-dashboards/
Also use the Search Box at the Top right of every page at Chandoo.org and search for Dashboard
thank you brother.
i love all of you!
Dear Excel Guru,
Hope everything is fine with you?
Can you please help in this Logic, it is a thought only to increase my knowledge SIR?
Please note that I have been working in Excel file contains two times of our teammates who claims overtime an each calendar month
My excel file as like this :-
ROW 1 Days of Month
ROW 2 Date of Month
Cell -1 [Time IN(06:00Hrs)], cell -2 [Time OUT(15:30Hrs)] no break in our factory and anything after Eight hours assume as overtime as standard in all across.
Appreciate if you could help me in providing the best an Exclusive Excel formula to calculate each day overtime excluding staff eight hours regular duty and Friday consider as full day overtime.
Kindly help me at the earliest convenience.
awaiting for your expertise.............
Best Regards / Ikram Siddiqui
Thank you for video , will you please provide pivot table with header and sub header like year main header and under that three sub header. How to make dashboard for that.
Dear Sir,
How to seperate amount, mention in remarks.