Lets take a break from all the Excel trickery. Today I want to share a joyous news with you all.
Today I want to take you back in time, all the way to 1987. I want to share a story with you. So, sit back, sip some coffee and enjoy.
Year 1987 and aftermath
My dad is working as a sales manager back then. He is a quintessential salesman. Busy, flamboyant, confident, tall & fun. I remember him very vaguely now. But I remember having lots of good time at family dinners (we are a family of 5 – my younger brother, mom, dad, dad’s mom & myself). I remember riding his scooter on trips to my school, family clinic or just around the corner.
Then, as if someone shook us from a dream and took everything away, my dad suddenly passed away in the summer of that year. He had a fatal liver failure.
It was a big shock for all of us, especially my mom, who had been married to him for 7 years. My mother studied only up to Class 12. She did not have any job skills back then. On top, she is burdened with 2 little kids (my brother is 5 and I was 6 at that time). We did not have money, house or any other type of assets.
So we moved to my mother’s mother house. My grand parents were kind enough to support us in those dark years.
With in a few years we started getting regular pension, thanks to my dad’s life insurance. This gave a sense of financial security and freedom to us. But, we still felt one gnawing pain. We did not have a home to live.
Between 1990 and 2006, we stayed in 8 different houses. This constant shifting & lack of security bothered my brother and me very much.We decided that, we would get a house as soon as we can.
In fact, I even said to myself that I would not get married before owning a house.
Fast forward to 2000s
So I wanted to own a house, before building a family. But then, I met Jo, we dated for a few years, realized that we are perfect for each other. We could not imagine living without each other. So we got married in year 2007. There was still no house.
Meanwhile, housing prices kept on raising and made my dream almost impossible to achieve without a back breaking mortgage loan. So I kept saying myself, “let me work hard for a few years, save money and then, we will get a house.”
In year 2009, we became parents to a set of lovely, naughty and adorable twins. Nakshatra (girl) & Nishanth (boy) transformed our lives in ways we could not imagine. While the joys of parenting are overwhelming, I was worried all the time about the house. “What if something bad happens and we end up without a home.”
Still we kept saving and living frugally.
Enter 2011 – In search of a house
Since we are against loans (see note 1), we waited until we have enough funds to purchase the house we want. Finally, by March 2011, we reached that stage. So we started looking for a suitable house.
We went to property fairs, told everyone in our immediate social circles, approached agents, pored thru classifieds and online ads. Very soon, we are very tired and felt hopeless.
Good houses almost always have exorbitant prices
Bad or poor houses are over priced too.
We almost gave up and decided to live in a rented house for few more years. But then, a neighbor told us about a house that is up for sale, in the locality where we live. I went and checked it out on the same day. I liked it. It seemed like a house we could call home.
Few days later, we visited the house again. This time with Jo & kids. We liked the space and calm neighborhood. We discussed with a few relatives & friends and made an offer to the owners. After some negotiations, we purchased the house on 26th July, this year.
Then we started renovating the house. It took 2 and half months to get everything done. We have remodeled the kitchen, done wood-work (cupboards), changed flooring, added a car park, store room, upgraded some of the electrical & plumbing fixtures.
Finally, we moved in to the house last Saturday (15th October) and loving it ever since.
Details & Photos of our home
- Total land area: 350 Sq. Yards (292 sq. mts)
- House carpet area: 1000 Sft (92 sq. mts)
- Rooms: 2 bedrooms, living, kitchen, storage, 2 bath & toilets
- Purchase price: ~ $100k
- Location: Vizag
These photos were taken on October 3rd, when we had the traditional Gruha Pravesham (it is like house warming celebration). So you so almost no furniture. The photo of my office room is taken today (October 20th).
Our Living Room
This is our Kitchen
My Office Room (doubles up as guest bedroom too)
Our Living room from Kitchen
Entering our House (Gruha Pravesham) with a Ribbon Cut
Jo and I in our Kitchen
For more pics, checkout New Home Set on my Flickr page.
Thank you & Thanks to Excel
As we live, breathe, enjoy and sleep in this home, I could not thank enough for your support in making this happen. I am so glad you identify with the mission of Chandoo.org and spread a good word about it. I am so humbled that you support us by joining our training programs, purchasing our e-books & products. I am so thankful to you for spending time with us everyday, learning & sharing new things.
Thank you.
I am also thankful to MS Excel, the powerful, awesome tool that transformed my life. It gave me the courage to quit a comfortable job and embark on an exciting journey of running a small business. Thank you so much Microsoft & Excel for being awesome.
One last thing
There is a reason why I am writing this today instead of last Saturday, when we moved in to the new home. Today (Oct 20) is also my birthday. As I celebrate my 29th birthday, I feel immensely grateful, content and happy for the journey so far. The fact that I can share my life, knowledge and mistakes with you all makes me very lucky. I hope the coming years are just as wonderful for you and me.
PS: because of the house renovation work during last 8 weeks, I could not reply to as many emails as I want to. So if you are one of those who mailed me and never heard back, please resend and I will get back to you at the earliest.
More Personal Stories
If you would like to learn more about the personal side of Chandoo.org, have a read thru these,
- Story of Chandoo.org Start-up
- Thank you Excel, We have a car
- How Excel Transformed my life (story of 1 year of running Chandoo.org)
- Christmas & New Year Wishes – 2011
- Meet Nakshatra & Nishanth – our kids
- I am Dad!!!
Added later:
Note 1: As some of you pointed, I did have a mortgage loan (which has 2 more months on it). I borrowed this year 2007 for an apartment (condo) I purchased for my brother. Even though that house is not for me, I still pay the loan as I love my brother and want to support him.
Note2: Our new home is in Vizag, the same place where we have been living for last 2 years.
49 Responses to “Interactive Pivot Table Calendar & Chart in Excel!”
Excellent post again from awesome chandoo.org
This is one of the post to evident, without using macros we can create excellent charts using available excel options.
Slicer is one of the useful option in excel 2010 .. excited to see more options in excel 2013.
Regards,
Saran
http://www.lostinexcel.blogspot.com
Nice one chandoo............... great work done.....
Cool article. Only downside was that I didn't see at first that I needed 2010. Guess I still have to wait awhile before getting to try this out myself.
I consider myself an Excel expert, but you constantly amaze me with posts like this. Fantastic calendar!
Good post, like this little trick!!
How to not show the value in the cell
format the cell to custom with the below
;;;
Could you add lists of holidays to be transferred to the calendar days?
Two lists would be needed: 1) for the holidays that stay fixed (eg, CHristmas), and 2) for the holidays that move around (eg, Thanksgiving).
Such lists would be prepared externally, and the program would transfer their information to the appropriate days.
Wow! This is something amazing. I am going to do some practicals with this and show a sales trend on this. As we have our sales plans weekly basis, this should impress by boss when put in dashboard. Cool.
And thanks1
Chandoo you have a knack of getting on to these great looking very creative ideas!
One thing with calendars I have seen before is not catering for able to enter notes or appointments or project milestones. But with this one it's easy enough to add the extra lines as you have done for the chart concept and link to this other type of info.
For 2003 we could replace slicers with a validation style dropdown couldn't we?
Chandoo, you are awesome;) i was using calender to show my reports, but i had made all months and then underneith date shows the value, man its really awesome . i am going to use this format for my reports.. only draw back for me is i am using 2007. hence no slicer.. may be have to modify with out slicer.
Why not use =weeknum() for the weeknum column?
Great tricks! I love trying to reproduce the charts myself to get the hang of 'em. This one was great.
My only issue is getting the VBA in the year object to refresh the data. I used the VBA provided at the link, and, I can see it in the Macros tab, but, when I click the spinner the data does not update. Any tips?
Thx!
3G
^^Ignore this! NOT ENOUGH COFFEE YET.
I forgot about the "Assign Macro" option
:-s
Just started at chandoo - this is great!
I opted to use the formula =IF(F6>F5,G5,G5+1) for my weeknum - worked for me (I didn't get all the way through the example, since I'm running Excel 2007 - so don't know if that'll affect anything later in the example). I'm open to comments on this alternative approach.
Thanks for creating this website!
VC (Excel student).
Very cool - but now I'm even more excited for the new time controls for Excel 2013!
Great calendar...
I wonder whether we can make a school calendar (Class, subjects, teachers) using this calendar, assuming the weekly plan is duplicated across the year.
I would love to be a part of creating a class schedule...I'm attempting to help a friend (gratis) to do just that - can you point me in the right direction or provide a sample of sorts?
[...] Wow – what do you think of the interactive calendar chart demo above? To achieve this impressive effect you must have Excel 2010 because it utilises slicers, which is a feature introduced in Excel 2010. Find out how this treasure was created on Chandoo’s page. [...]
Hello Chandoo,
Great works! I learn a lot from this website. Here is the problem I met when I follow your tutorial: once I run and save this cool pivot calendar chart , the size of excel file will increase every time. Could you let me know how to figure it out? Thank you for your time in advance.
An excel chart-fan from China.
I already figured it out.
wow, love the calendar, i'm a newbie, found this site and it's amazing.
Got it mostly figured out, but could do with help with your named range 'tblchosen'
I can build the pivots, link the calendars together but can't see how to use index(tblchosen...) to pull through the productivity figures
appreciate any help
thanks
Great. Miss the Today button. Will try and figure a way to add this to the file.
I want to start the week on Monday, not Sunday (MTWTFSS). Re-arranging the calendar tab works however, any month where the 1st is a Sunday starts on the second and totally omits Sun 1. I have been tinkerign for a while, but can't seem to figure this out.
Changing F2 on the 'Calcs' tab to 2 so that the week starts on Monday works.
Cutting & pasting Sunday on the 'Pivot Calendar' tab and moving all cells up 1 row works.
However, using April 2013 for example, you lose the 1st off of the pivot calendar so that the month starts on 2 April. What should happen is the first row should only show Sun 1 April and then the next row starts Mon 2 April. Still can't fugure out where the problem lies.
"Further Enhancements:
Adjust week start to Monday: Likewise, you can modify your formulas to adjust weekstart to Monday or any other day you fancy."
I have tinkered with this previously with no success, does anyone know which formulas require tinkering, I have only succeeded in breaking this in an effort start a week on a Monday.
[...] Interactivo Artículo original var dd_offset_from_content = 50; var dd_top_offset_from_content = 0; Tags: 2013, calendario, [...]
Completely off topic, but how do you create those animated pictures in your tutorials? It is not a movie (like the Youtube movie), so what software do you use to create such high quality "animated" pictires? Thanks
Jeroen
the animated pics are called Animated Gifs
they are made using Camtasia
Refer: http://chandoo.org/wp/about/what-we-use/
This is fairly easy to do just using calendar formulas, which would be quicker, and doesn't need VBA? Am I missing something?
[...] on how to generate an interactive calendar using pivot tables. Please check out Chandoo’s Interactive Pivot Table Calendar & Chart in Excel before reading this, as I want to go through how I used his method to adapt a calendar which was [...]
Great tip shared by you... howevr would appreciate if you could mention in your tricks about excel version. The example above would work only in excel 2010 and above I believe. Please help me if there is any way we can use the tip in excel 2007 as well..
Many Thanks,
Regards,
FK
Hi, I'm going to give this a shot, but one small question before I do. Can a linked cell be updated based on the date that is selected from the calendar? The calendar is really cool and this would make is especially good to use (and easy and fast).
Regards,
swissfish.
This post is awesome, and using your instructions, I was able to get this to work with a pivot table that pulls directly from a Project Server database. It was a bit complicated to get the day to sum correctly, but I managed to finagle it. I hope you don't mind if I link back to you when I post my instructions.
Thanks for giving me a starting point for this!
[...] http://chandoo.org/wp/2012/09/12/interactive-pivot-calendar/ [...]
This is great, and pretty much everything I was looking for.
However, I already have a large spreadsheet, and I want to include your worksheets in it. I copied all the worksheets and the Module 1, but I can't get it to work. What else do I need to transfer / update please?
Hello there, is it possible to use this pivot to produce a calendar style chart, with returns multiple data per date, which on the calendar then, when clicked links to the data to provide more background information? What do you think? I'd love if I could pivot when i need. thanks, m
Hi, did you ever figure out how to do this? I would love to find a way...
This is amazing and will work well for my calendar project! My question is, how can I expand the calendar to fit a standard sheet of paper?
Wow - this is so creative. I'm taking the basic idea and building a reservation calendar.
Question: How do you get the month and year slicers on a different page than the pivot tables? I'd like to have my final calendar on a separate page from the pivot.
[…] http://chandoo.org/wp/2012/09/12/interactive-pivot-calendar/ […]
This is perfect...is there a way to add notes/tasks to the individual days?
Excel will not let me insert blank rows between lines in the pivot table. I am use Excel 2013 - is there a pivot table tools command that must be used?
I can create the pivot table calender with a year spinner & month slicer but I do not see how to display the the attendance information that I have in the original data table.
Thank you for the wonderful post and I am sorry for my lack of understanding...
Excellent!
Please show me how to add an alternative calendar to this calendar, Chinese or lunar calendar (and by lunar I don't mean phases of the moon), like what they still use in Asia
Thanks
Christopher
[…] Wow – what do you think of the interactive calendar chart demo above? To achieve this impressive effect you must have Excel 2010 because it utilises slicers, which is a feature introduced in Excel 2010. Find out how this treasure was created on Chandoo’s page. […]
Hello my name is Maurice, excuse me for my further request, but believe me, without your help priprio not know how to solve this problem.
So: always using a chart positioned on an excel sheet I wanted to match each square (series) to a single cell, to create a perpetual calendar.
Now everything works fine; except that for a fact, and it is this: In the calendar as you well know some numbers may not be apparent until certain conditions, which I solved by writing this "= O code (AA5 = DATE ( $ H $ 1; MONTH ($ AD $ 12) +1; 1)) and the game and done.
Now I would like to achieve the same thing using the Chart; How can I do to make this happen! let me also just a practical example so that I can understand all the rest then I'll do; Thanks Greetings from A.Maurizio
Link Program : Link: https://app.box.com/s/lhqva3eji0xcf2nmk8lxyki88tt1mi5t
Great info, thanks for sharing
Hi,
I love your calendar however I am modifying it for use in displaying employee performance metrics on a day by day basis.
I see where tblChosen and tblDates are named ranges however I cannot find them anywhere.
Are they assigned to specific cells because I cannot tell.
I see both of them in the Name Manager, which tells me what they refer to but does not give a value or cell location.
@Mike
With the Names in the Name Manager
Simply select the name
Then click in the Refers To: box at the Bottom
Excel will take you to where the Named Range is referring to
[…] Wow – what do you think of the interactive calendar chart demo above? To achieve this impressive effect you must have Excel 2010 because it utilises slicers, which is a feature introduced in Excel 2010. Find out how this treasure was created on Chandoo’s page. […]
Hi, Chandoo
This Pivot Calendar is an excellent idea. I’ve done one for myself using your guidelines. I just need something I’m not being able to do. I need that when I open the file the default date is set to today’s date. I know how to do it with conditional formatting. But I think I’ll need some vba coding for this. Can you please help me with this. Thanks in advance