Lets just say, you run a nice little orange shop called, “Joe’s Awesome Oranges“. And being an Excel buff, you record the daily sales in to a workbook, in this format.
After recording the sales for a couple of months, you got a refreshing idea, why not analyze the sales between any given 2 dates? for analysis sake.
So you entered 2 dates, Starting Date in cell F5 and Ending Date in cell F6
How would you sum up the sales between the dates in F5 & F6?
This is where use the powerful SUMIFS formula.
Assuming the dates are in column B & sales are in column C,
we write =SUMIFS($C$5:$C$95,$B$5:$B$95,">="&$F$5,$B$5:$B$95,"<="&$F$6)
to calculate the sum of sales between the dates in F5 & F6.
How does this formula work?
- $C$5:$C$95 portion: This is the range of cells where our Sales values are recorded. We want these to be summed up based on the conditions as below.
- Condition 1: $B$5:$B$95 >= $F$5: This condition tells SUMIFS to check Column B for any dates on or after F5
- Condition 2: $B$5:$B$95 <= $F$6: This condition tells SUMIFS to check Column B for any dates on or before F6
- When combined, the SUMIFS formula checks for both conditions and adds sales only for dates between Starting (F5) and Ending (F6) dates.
- Learn more about SUMIFS syntax & how to use it.
What formula you should use in Excel 2003?
As you may know, SUMIFS formula does not work in earlier versions of Excel. But you don’t have to shut your orange shop because of that. We can use the all powerful SUMPRODUCT formula for this.
For example, =SUMPRODUCT(($B$5:$B$95>=$F$5)*($B$5:$B$95<=$F$6),$C$5:$C$95) would work the same.
Learn more about SUMPRODUCT formula & why it is awesome.
We can even use SUM & OFFSET formulas if …,
We can also use SUM & OFFSET combination to perform this calculation, provided dates are in smallest first order and all dates are entered. For the example, see download file.
Download Example Workbook:
Click here to download example workbook & play with it.
How would you sum up values between 2 dates?
In reporting situations, showing summary of values between 2 dates is a common requirement. So I use either formulas like above or Pivot Tables to do this.
What about you? How would you sum up values between 2 dates? Please share your ideas & tips using comments.
Learn More Date Related Formulas:
- How to find if 2 sets of dates overlap?
- Extract Quarterly Totals from Monthly Data
- Automatic Rolling Months in Excel
- How to Clean-up Dates in Excel
- Calculate Elapsed Time in Excel
- More on Date & Time
Want to Learn More Formulas? Join Our Crash Course
If you want to learn SUMIFS, SUMPRODUCT, OFFSET and 40 other day to day formulas, then consider my Excel Formula Crash Course. It has 31 lessons split in to 6 modules and makes you awesome in Excel formulas.
Click here to learn more about this.
15 Responses to “Make a Bubble Chart in Excel [15 second tutorial]”
Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!
Whyyyyyyyy?
The idea is to tell how to make a bubble chart. I got an e-mail from a reader recently asking how the scatter bubble is made. So I thought a 15 second tutorial would be a good idea to show this.
Did that email go "Dear Chandoo, I know that you scorn bubble charts, but if I don't do one in Excel for my boss then he'll fire my sorry ass, and my children will have to be sold for medical experiments in order for me to be able to afford the upgrade path to Excel 2010"?
If so, fair enough...it's all in the greater good 😉
Chandoo,
I am using excel 2003 and it is not working. The x axis is not the one that I enter in x axis column. Please help! Thanks.
Sorry, after few attempts, I managed to get the right result. I shouldn't select the title (header) of the table and select only the data to produce the right bubble chart.
What's wrong with bubble charts? Is there a better method for displaying scatter plots with lots of overlapping data points? Don't tell me you'd rather jitter!
@Sanwijay: Cool.
@Precious Roy: There is nothing wrong with bubble charts. Infact, it is the only way to show 3 dimensional data (x,y and sizes) without confusing your audience. Jeff is worried that people might misuse the chart. As with any chart, bubbles also have a place and time for using them.
I recommend using bubble charts to show relative performance various products in several regions and similar situations.
Also, human eye is notorious in wrongly estimating the bubble sizes (as we have to measure areas). See http://chandoo.org/wp/2009/07/28/charting-lessons-from-optical-illusions/
We can partially improve bubble charts by adding data labels, but if you have too many bubbles, the labels will clutter the chart and make it look busy.
I can't seem to find a way to plot more than ten bubbles on a chart and need to know how to add more
@KW.. why would such a thing happen. I am sure you can add more bubbles that that. Can you tell us exactly what you are doing...
Example table:
A B C (size)
Me: 25 30 15%
Him: 30 22 11%
Her: 12 30 20%
I am trying to make a bubble chart where the Y axis is A, the X axis is B, and the size of the bubble is C. There should be only 3 bubbles. I keep ending up with six (with the labels being only "Me" and "Her"). My goal is to have three bubbles, one representing each person. Clearly I am doing something wrong. Can you help explain...?
Hi,
I wanted to add data labels to the bubbles. Each bubble represents a different company name. Excel allows me to add the size, legend, x axis values and y axis values. How do I add instead- Company A, B, C, D for the bubbles?
youon you have to choice every data for every company..
ex:create bubble for A company,after that click right> add data label> adjust data labels :format data labels and choose : series name.
i hop u will succeed .
[...] we create a bubble chart with 2 bubbles. 1 for the actual mustache & 1 for target [...]
If we want bubble size to be controlled by one column, but the bubble labels to be controlled by another column, how can this be achieved?
many thanks!!!!