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Interactive Sales Chart using MS Excel

Last updated on May 9, 2012

Chandoo

Finally, I got some time to sit down and do what I love most – write a blog post to make you awesome in Excel. After a whirlwind trip to Sydney, I am back in India to spend few days with my kids & wife before rushing to Australia to run 2nd leg of my training programs (in Perth, Melbourne & Brisbane). I did 2 sessions in Sydney – one for KPMG and other for public and both went very well. We got lots of positive feedback and people really loved it. I am saving the details for another post, but today lets talk about Interactive Sales Chart using Excel.

Take a look at the Interactive Sales Chart

First, take a look at interactive sales chart. Today, you will learn how to build this using Excel.

Inspiration for this chart

Before we learn how you can create such a chart, let me tell where the inspiration came from. Yesterday, Persol, a forum member asked, How to make an info-radar chart, where he mentioned the below chart from Good.is

[Click here to play with this chart]

While I took inspiration from the above chart, I replaced the radar chart with a regular column chart (as column charts are easier to read) and modified the data to a sales data set.

How to create interactive sales chart in Excel?

First, take a look at the data

The sales data for this chart looked like this:

I have set up this data in an Excel Table called as tblSales so that it is easier to write formulas.

The formulas

To calculate various values in the chart, we use ample doses of SUMIFS formula.

The Interactivity

When you click on any year, region or product name, we run worksheet_seletionchange event. This tells our calculation engine which year, region & product are chosen. Then the formulas would (re)calculate the data for charts. This updates the charts & conditional formats.

Here is how the interactive chart works:

How to create interactive charts like this – Video

Since the actual mechanics of this are quite elaborate, I made a short video (15 min) explaining how various parts of this chart work. Please watch it below.

[You can watch the video on our Youtube channel too]

Download Interactive Sales Chart Workbook

Click here to download the workbook & play with it. Examine the macros & formulas to learn more.

How do you like this chart?

I really liked Good.is chart and wanted to see how much of it we can do in Excel. It was a fun exercise. I have noticed that such charts excite people (decision makers too) and make your reports fun.

What about you? How do you like the interactive sales chart? What additions / modifications would you do to it? Please share your thoughts using comments.

Create Interactive Charts using Excel

Interactive charts are one my favorite visualizations. They let users play with the chart & decide what they want. So, naturally I write about them every now and then. Please go thru these examples if you want to learn various interactive charting techniques in Excel.

I also recommend enrolling in our Excel + VBA Class if you want to learn these techniques and create stunning reports & charts. Click here to learn more about our Excel + VBA training program.