Here is a cool count-down timer application made in VBA to remind you about our VBAClasses registration closing time!
I know it is blindingly awesome. So I will give you a few seconds before reading further.
….
Back already? Great.
I was thinking of ways to tell you that you have got less than 3 days to join our VBA Class. Then it struck me, why not make an Excel workbook to tell you how much time you have got? So I did just that.
Here is a video demo of how the VBA application works (watch on YouTube):
Download the VBA Classes Count-down Timer Workbook:
Click here to download the workbook. Please enable macros to see it.
PS: You must drag and drop this file in to Excel 2007 or above to see it.
How does the Count-down Timer Work?
First, I must tell you about its limitations:
- This workbook assumes that your computer is located at the hotspot (or city) you have chosen.
- The current time is fetched from your computer’s local time using NOW() formula.
Now, the basic construction of this workbook can be broken down to 3 parts:
- Hotspot / City Selection
- Countdown Timer
- Formatting
Hotspot / City Selection:
- I took an outline map of world and put it in an empty sheet. On top of this I have added 9 hotspots by drawing nine circles.
- I have named these hotspots spot1, spot2…,spot9
- As you can guess, each of these spots correspond to one time zone, from PST to Australian Time.
- I have assigned macros to each of them. The macros would just modify a cell named valSpot with the name of the spot on which I clicked.
- Based on the clicked spot, I fetched the corresponding closing time from a table like this:
- Then, I calculated the time left by subtracting current time from closing time.
- A similar logic is used for City selection.
Countdown timer:
- I have inserted a check box and linked it to a cell named showTimer
- I have also assigned a macro startTimer to the checkbox.
- The startTimer macro would call a different macro named – countDownTime()
- In this, I wrote a while loop that would check if the showTimer is true and ask Excel to update the currentTime once every second
- The code can be examined from the downloaded file.
Formatting:
I am leaving this to your imagination.
Bottom line: Join our VBA Classes
Of course, the whole point of this is very simple.
If you want to learn VBA, then please join our VBA classes. We will be closing registrations in 3 more days. After that we will be busy for next few months teaching VBA to those of you who joined us.
Click here to join our VBA Classes.
PS: When you join our VBA Class, you get to learn how this timer app is constructed in a detailed 40 minute lesson. That is just one of the many lessons in our class. So, join us already.
8 Responses to “Top 5 keyboard shortcuts for Excel Charts”
As far as I remember (checked, again, 2 minutes ago) in my "Excel 2013" in order to select various chart elements I need to use the Arrow keys and not the TAB key.
Practically, the TAB key does nothing (within a Chart).
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Michael (Micky) Avidan
Thanks for pointing this out. This is how I remember it too, but when I was recording the video yesterday, only TAB key worked. MS must have changed the keys in Excel 2016. I have edited the post to include both keys.
The key navigation on charts is different in 2016.
TAB cycles through a layer of objects (SHIFT+TAB cycles backwards)
ENTER move down a layer
ESC moves up a layer
So on a column chart with title/legend/data labels if you select the plotarea the TAB will go through Title > Legend > Plotarea.
ENTER at plotarea will then select Vertical axis. Tab will take you through
Horizontal axis > gridlines > Series > Horizontal Axis.
ENTER with series selected will then allow you to TAB through individual data points and data labels.
If you ENTER on datalabels you can TAB through each data label.
ALT + F1 : to create default chart
ALT+E S T = CTRL + ALT + V, T : I find that easier to remember
I second what Michael already said about TAB and arrow keys. I can't help but think if this is related to the "," or ";" as separator. I prefer to use the chart tools - layout- drop down box, anyway.
Got to be F11 for instant charting. Highlight your data , hit F11 and voila! ?
Ctrl+1 is the most important chart shortcut. In fact, it works for any Excel object: whatever is selected, Ctrl+1 opens the task pane or dialog to format that object.
Somewhere along the line, maybe when Excel 2016 came out, the arrow keys stopped working to cycle through the elements of a chart. But what works is holding Ctrl while clicking the arrow keys. I haven't gotten used to the Tab and other keys, but as long as Ctrl+Arrow works, I'm good.
And F4 used to be so helpful when formatting a lot of charts. But since Excel 2007 came out, it has been mostly useless. It used to remember a whole set of changes at once, so I get that the newer modeless dialogs make that impractical. But now it only seems to work with formatting of lines and borders, and maybe fills. I find myself writing a lot of VBA one-liners in the Immediate Window to handle these tedious formatting tasks.
after clicking on a chart, is there a shortcut key to copy it?
Thank you for the Alt E S T - tip. This is more than a time saver. Because of dynamic charts or de-activated external references to data when you make the charts, you often have empty charts that are otherwise impossible to format. So this shortcut helps adressing that. I will work with it more and see if there remain some obstacles.