Recently, I ran a contest asking you to analyze a bunch of sales data and present your results in charts. We received a total of 78 charts from 45 people. The contest entries had a mind-boggling variety of excel charts, techniques and ideas. It took me a while to go thru all the files and compile the results. Thanks for your patience. In this post, you can find all the charts along with my comments & links to download files.
How to read this article?
This is a very big page. So let me help you out.
- Each of the 45 contestant’s entries are shown in one box. The box shows one of the charts the contestant has made.
- If the contestant has made more than 1 chart, then thumbnails of remaining charts are shown beneath. You can click on thumbnails to enlarge the images.
- For some charts, I have added my comments.
- You can download the file(s) for each contestant’s charts by clicking download links below the image
- If you want to learn how a particular chart is constructed, refer to Related Articles section
- I really liked some of the entries. You can see “Chandoo’s pick” icon on top of such charts.
- This article is big. So get a cup of coffee and enjoy it sip by sip.
Winner of this contest will be announced tomorrow.
[01] Line chart by Aditya

| My comments | Downloads | Related Articles | » Smart chart labels » Good color choices, well contrasted |
• Download file | ♥ Smart chart labels |
[02] Column chart by Al

| My comments | Downloads | Related Articles | » Interesting presentation » Use of shapes to highlight the message |
• Download file | ♥ Smart chart labels ♥ How to make charts when you have too much data |
[04] Column chart by Ameya

| My comments | Downloads | Related Articles | » Interactive charts » Revenue Trend lines |
• Download file • Download file 2 • Download file 3 |
♥ Using form controls ♥ Dynamic Charts with Check Boxes |
[06] Column chart by Anachalee

| My comments | Downloads | Related Articles | » Interactive charts » Revenue Trend lines |
• Download file | ♥ Using form controls |
Excel School Online Training Program by Chandoo
| My comments | Downloads | Related Articles | » Learn Excel Step by Step » Analyze data like a pro » Become Awesome! |
• Download Excel School Brochure | ♥ Excel School Demos ♥ Excel School FAQS ♥ Excel School Pricing & Signup |
[08] Column chart by Arpita

| My comments | Downloads | Related Articles | » Interesting presentation » Not made in Excel |
• Download file | ♥ Using form controls |
[09] Panel chart by Ben

| My comments | Downloads | Related Articles | » Panel chart » Average line |
• Download file | ♥ Panel charts |
[11] Panel chart by E

| My comments | Downloads | Related Articles | » Panel chart » Very well constructed » Good color choice, well contrasted |
• Download file | ♥ Panel charts |
[12] Dashboard by Ezequiel

| My comments | Downloads | Related Articles | » Interactive charts » Multiple types of analysis possible |
• Download file | ♥ Using form controls ♥ Display on-demand details in excel charts ♥ Panel charts |
[13] Line charts by Fredrick

| My comments | Downloads | Related Articles | » Good observations » Trend line |
• Download file |
[15] Dashboard by Harshad

| My comments | Downloads | Related Articles | » Good structuring of charts » Interactive charts » Interesting observations |
• Download file | ♥ Using form controls ♥ Comparison charts ♥ Donut bar chart |
[16] Panel chart by Jay

| My comments | Downloads | Related Articles | » Panel chart » Totals vs. monthly product-wise breakup |
• Download file | ♥ Panel charts |
Excel School Online Training Program by Chandoo
| My comments | Downloads | Related Articles | » Learn Excel Step by Step » Analyze data like a pro » Become Awesome! |
• Download Excel School Brochure | ♥ Excel School Demos ♥ Excel School FAQS ♥ Excel School Pricing & Signup |
[17] Panel chart by Jeff

| My comments | Downloads | Related Articles | » Good color choices » Panel chart |
• Download file | ♥ Panel charts |
[18] Column chart by Jennifer

| My comments | Downloads | Related Articles | » Interesting legend | • Download file | ♥ Smart chart labels |
[19] Column chart by Jochen

| My comments | Downloads | Related Articles | » Interactive chart » Lots of analysis possible |
• Download file | ♥ Using form controls ♥ Dynamic Charts with Check Boxes |
[22] Panel chart by Laksiri

| My comments | Downloads | Related Articles | » Panel chart » Monthly panels along with overall panel » Good colors |
• Download file | ♥ Panel charts |
[23] Column chart by Lu

| My comments | Downloads | Related Articles | » Incell chart | • Download file | ♥ Incell Charts |
[24] Column chart by Lukas

| My comments | Downloads | Related Articles | » Very good colors » Interesting chart construction » Table to support additional analysis |
• Download file |
[25] Area chart by Mat

| My comments | Downloads | Related Articles | » totals in second series as a line » Well contrasted labels » Grouping |
• Download file |
[26] Panel chart by Matt

| My comments | Downloads | Related Articles | • Download file • Download file 2 |
♥ Panel charts |
[28] Column chart by Michael

| My comments | Downloads | Related Articles | » Multiple charts for different types of analysis | • Download file |
[29] Column chart by Michael

| My comments | Downloads | Related Articles | » Interactive charts » Interesting presentation, lots of analysis possible » Indicator arrows for selected series (clever) |
• Download file | ♥ Using form controls ♥ Display on-demand details in excel charts ♥ Smart chart labels |
[30] Panel chart by Mohammed

| My comments | Downloads | Related Articles | » Interesting panel chart construction » Good color choices, well contrasted |
• Download file | ♥ Panel charts |
[31] Column chart by Nadeem

| My comments | Downloads | Related Articles | » Interactive charts » Very well constructed, lots of analysis possible » Good colors |
• Download file | ♥ Using form controls ♥ Comparison charts |
[32] Column chart by Noah

| My comments | Downloads | Related Articles | » Grouping of data » Good color choices, well contrasted |
• Download file |
[33] Column chart by Nuruddin

| My comments | Downloads | Related Articles | » Interactive chart » Lots of analysis possible |
• Download file | ♥ Using form controls ♥ Display on-demand details in excel charts ♥ Dynamic Charts with Check Boxes |
[40] Column chart by Shellie

| My comments | Downloads | Related Articles | » Interactive charts » Lots of analysis possible » Well contrasted colors |
• Download file | ♥ Using form controls ♥ Dynamic Charts with Check Boxes |
[41] Column chart by Simon

| My comments | Downloads | Related Articles | » Very well constructed interactive chart (requires macros) » On demand details, lots of analysis possible » Good colors |
• Download file | ♥ Using form controls ♥ Display on-demand details in excel charts ♥ Comparison charts |
[43] Panel chart by Tom

| My comments | Downloads | Related Articles | » Good color choices » Panel chart » Lots of chart options |
• Download file | ♥ Panel charts |
[44] Column chart by Utami

| My comments | Downloads | Related Articles | » Interactive chart | • Download file | ♥ Using form controls |
[45] Column chart by M

| My comments | Downloads | Related Articles | » Simple and effective colors » Well contrasted labels |
• Download file |
Excel School Online Training Program by Chandoo
| My comments | Downloads | Related Articles | » Learn Excel Step by Step » Analyze data like a pro » Become Awesome! |
• Download Excel School Brochure | ♥ Excel School Demos ♥ Excel School FAQS ♥ Excel School Pricing & Signup |
Thanks to Everyone
Many thanks to all the participants of this contest. I have really enjoyed going thru your files and understand the charting techniques you have employed. I learned a lot of interesting techniques too, which I will share on this blog during next few weeks.
Special thanks to Ravindra, my assistant, who helped me in compiling all the results and taking screenshots of the charts.
Also, thanks to Hui, for giving his feedback and suggesting few more picks.
Which charts did you like?
As you can see, there are several excellent charts. I liked the about 14 different entries and marked them all with Chandoo’s pick
What about you? Which charts did you like? Please tell us using comments.
Who is the winner?
I will be announcing the winner of this contest by tomorrow (1st of July).
Related Articles
If you want to learn how many of these charts are constructed, then you must go thru these articles.
- Using form controls
- Display on-demand details in excel charts
- Panel charts
- Comparison charts
- Donut bar chart
- Smart chart labels
- How to make charts when you have too much data
- Dynamic Charts with Check Boxes
- Incell Charts
- Sales Dashboards using Excel
- Excel Dashboards – Information, templates & tutorials
- Dynamic & Interactive Charts in Excel
- Excel Charting Examples & Templates





























































12 Responses to “29 Excel Formula Tips for all Occasions [and proof that PHD readers truly rock]”
Some great contributions here.
Gotta love the Friday 13th formula 😀
Great tips from you all! Thanks a lot for sharing! bsamson, particularly you helped me on a terribly annoying task. 🙂
(BTW, Chandoo, it's not exactly "Find if a range is normally distributed" what my suggestion does. It checks if two proportions are statistically different. I probably gave you a bad explanation on twitter, but it'd be probably better if you fix it here... 🙂 )
Great compilation Chandoo
For the "Clean your text before you lookup"
=VLOOKUP(CLEAN(TRIM(E20)),F5:G18,2,0)
I would like to share a method to convert a number-stored-as-text before you lookup:
=VLOOKUP(E20+0,F5:G18,2,0)
@Peder, yeah, I loved that formula
@Aires: Sorry, I misunderstood your formula. Corrected the heading now.
@John.. that is a cool tip.
Hey Chandoo,
That p-value formula is really great for a statistics person like me.
What a p-value essentially is, is the probability that the results obtained from a statistical test aren't valid. So for example, if my p value is .05, there's a 5% probability that my results are wrong.
You can play with this if you install the Data Analysis Toolpak (which will perform some statistical tests for you AND provide the P Value.)
Let's say for example I've got two weeks of data (separated into columns) with the number of hours worked per day. I want to find out if the total number of hours I worked in week two were really all the different than week one.
Week1 Week2
10 11
12 9
9 10
7 8
5 8
Go to Data > Data Analysis > T-Test Assuming Unequal Variances > OK
In the Variable 1 Box, select the range of data for week 1.
In the Variable 2 Box, select the range of data for week 2.
Check "Labels"
In the Alpha box, select a value (in percentage terms) for how tolerant you are of error.
.05 is the general standard; that is to say I am willing to accept a 95% level of confidence that my result is accuarate.
Select a range output.
Excel calculates a number of results: Average (mean) for each week's data, etc.
You'll notice however that there are two P Values; one-tail and two-tail. (one tail tests are for > or .05), the number of hours I worked in week two is statistically equivalent to the number of hours I worked in week one.
So here’s a way you might want to use this. You put up a new entry on your blog. You think it’s the best entry ever! So you pull your webstats for this week and compare it to last week. You gather data for each week on the length of time a visitor spends on your website. The question you’re trying to prove statistically is whether there’s an average increase in the amount of time spent on your website this week as compared to last week (as a result of your fancy new blog post). You can run the same statistical test I illustrated above to find out. Incidentally, it matters very little to the stat test whether the quantity of visitors differs or not.
Anyhow, the Data Analysis toolpack doesn't perform a lot of stat tests that folks like me would like to have access to. In those cases I have to either use different software, or write some very complicated mathematical formulas. Having this p-value formula makes my life a LOT easier!
Thanks!
Eric~
Fantastic stuf..One line explanation is cool.
Thanks to all the contributors
OS
Take FirstName, MI, LastName in access (you can fix it to work in excel) capitalize first letter of each and lowercase the rest and add ". " if MI exists then same for last name:
Full Name: Format(Left([FirstName],1),">") & Format(Right([FirstName]),Len([FirstName])-1),"") & ". ","") & Format(Left([LastName],1),">") & Format(Right([LastName],Len([LastName])-1),"<")
I teach excel, access, etc etc for a living and i have my access students build this formula one step at a time from the inside out to show how formulas can be made even if it looks complicated. Yes I know I could just do IsNull([MI]) and reverse the order in the Iif() function but the point here is to nest as many functions as possible one by one (also I illustrate how it will fail without the Not() as it is)
Extract the month from a date
The easiest formula for this is =MONTH(a1)
It will return a 1 for January, 2 for February etc.
if in a column we write the value of total person for eg. 10 if we spent 1.33 paise each person then how we get total amount in next column and the result will in round form plzzzzz solve my problem sir................... thank u
@Anjali
If the value 10 is in B2 and 1.33 paise is in C2 the formula in D2 could be =B2*C2
If the values are a column of values you can copy the formula down by copy/paste or drag the small black handle at the bottom right corner of cell D2
kindly share with me new forumulas.
How to convert a figure like 870.70 into 870 but 871.70 into 880 using excel formula ? Please help.