Everyone likes to be in control. Even my 2 year old daughter jumps with joy when she lays her hands on TV remote. She pushes the buttons and assumes it is working. It is another story that we rarely watch TV at home.
By adding an element of control, we can make our dashboard reports fun. Interactive elements like form controls, slicers etc. invite users to play with your dashboard, get involved and understand data by asking questions. That is why I recommend making dashboards interactive.
Today lets understand how you can make dashboards interactive.
There are 2 aspects to interactivity:
- What users see (controls, slicers etc.)
- How it works in background (formulas, pivots, tables etc.)
Section 1: Adding interactivity to your dashboards
There are many techniques to add interactivity to your dashboards. Lets look at each of them closely.
Using Data Validation to add drop-downs to a cell
This is the easiest way to get started. Using data validation feature in Excel, we can restrict only a set of values in a cell. When you do this, Excel shows a small drop down box (combo-box) inside the cell so that you can pick one of the possible values. Like this:
Demo of what you can do:
An example report show casing flu trends in US, various states & cities between 2003 – 2009. For more, click here.
Learn how to use data validation drop-downs:
- Adding data validation drop downs in Excel – Introduction & Examples
- Cascading Drop downs – load values in 2nd list depending first list
- Making data validation list dynamic
Example Dashboards with data validation drop downs
- Flu trends dashboard in Excel
- Visualizing Survey Results using Panel Charts
- Sales Analysis charts in Excel – lots of examples
- Personal Expense Trackers
- Sales Dashboards – lots of examples
- Excel Salary Survey – Dashboards – lots or examples
Using Form Controls to add interactivity
Almost all computer users are familiar with form controls. We see them every day – scroll bars, check boxes, option buttons, buttons – pretty much all programs in your computer are ripe with form controls. But do you know you can add the same controls to your Excel worksheet?
You can use these controls on worksheets to help select data. For example, drop-down boxes, list boxes, spinners, and scroll bars are useful for selecting items from a list. Option Buttons and Check Boxes allow selection of various options. Buttons allow execution of VBA code.
By adding a control to a worksheet and linking it to a cell, you can return a numeric value for the current position of the control. You can use that numeric value in conjunction with the Offset, Index or other worksheet functions to return values from lists.
Demo of what you can do:
[Watch the demo on our YouTube channel]
Learn how to use form controls
- Introduction to various form controls & Examples
- Using check boxes with charts – example & tutorial
- Using scroll bar control – simple mortgage payment calculator in Excel
Example dashboards using form controls
- KPI Dashboards using Excel
- Customer Service Dashboard in Excel
- Excel Salary Survey Dashboards – lots of examples
- Sales Dashboards in Excel – lots of examples
Using Slicers to add interactivity
Slicers, a new feature added in Excel 2010 can be used to add interactivity to your dashboards & reports. Slicers are like visual filters. So you can see all available options as small boxes and you can click which option you want.
Demo of Slicers in action:
Learn how to use Slicers
- Using slicers to make a dynamic dashboard in Excel
- Overview of slicers & other new features in Excel 2010
- Using slicers to select one of many scenarios in your models
Example Dashboards using Slicers
Using Click-able cells as interactive elements
With a few lines of VBA code, you can turn every cell in Excel in to a potential input option. When user clicks on a particular cell, you can treat that as interaction and modify your dashboard (or chart). This is a very powerful and intuitive way to use in dashboards. See below example.
Demo of what you can do:
Learn how to use click-able cells
Example dashboards using click-able cells type of interactivity
- Interactive sales chart in Excel
- Displaying product reviews on demand
- Grammy bump chart in Excel
- Customer service dashboard in Excel
- Excel Salary Survey Dashboards – lots of examples
Using Hyperlinks to add interactivity
Many of you know that you can type any text in a cell and press CTRL+K to convert it to a hyperlink to another part in your workbook. But Hyperlinks can trigger macros upon mouse hover. This is a powerful technique first mentioned by Jordan at OptionExplicitVBA.
By using this behavior, we can create an interactive report that gets updated upon mouse hover. See this demo:
Demo of what you can do:
Learn how to set up dynamic hyperlinks
- Interactive dashboards using Excel Hyperlinks – tutorial & explanation
- Video tutorial on Interactive hyperlinks
- Excel hyperlinks – basics, syntax & more
Example dashboards using interactive hyperlinks
- Excel Salary Survey Dashboards – lots of examples
- Periodic table of elements in Excel [Option Explicit VBA]
Using VBA / Macros to add interactivity
Of course, you can add active x or VBA events to add interactivity to your dashboards. This gives you lot of control on what you want and enables you to do more. That said, using VBA to provide interactivity requires that your audience must enable macros when they view your work.
There are many ways to add interactivity thru VBA. Some popular methods are,
- Adding buttons or assigning macros to drawing shapes, images
- Overlapping buttons or shapes on maps, floor plans etc. and driving events on click
- Using worksheet or active-x controls and adding events (like mouseover, click etc.)
Note: Both click-able cells & interactive hyperlinks also require VBA to be enabled. But the amount of code they require is quite less.
Demo of what you can do
Learn how to use VBA & Macros to add interactivity
- Introduction to VBA, Excel Macros
- Using VBA Macros to make a picture calendar
- Dynamic Pivot Chart using VBA Macros
Example Dashboards using VBA Macro based interactivity
- MLB Pitching Statistics Dashboard
- India’s world cup cricket victory in a dashboard
- Interactive Sales chart using Excel
- Sales analysis charts in Excel – multiple examples
- Excel Salary Survey dashboards – multiple examples
- Visualizing Roger Federer’s Wimbledon victory – Excel VBA Dashboard
Using Timelines to add interactivity [Excel 2013]
Starting Excel 2013, Microsoft is introducing a new feature called as Time lines. Timelines allow you to interactively select a range of dates. I have not yet written any articles on this feature. But here is a short demo on how they work:
Section 2: Behind interactivity – What you need to know in Excel
Now that you know various techniques for interactivity, lets understand various building blocks that help you get there.
Use tables to hold your data
One of the premises of interactivity is that your data can change. When this is the case, I suggest you to set up all your data in tables. Tables allow you to keep data that can grow (or shrink) and write formulas referring to whole range.
Learn how to use tables [Excel 2007 and above only]
Use INDEX formula
INDEX formula helps you extract a portion (single cell, range) from a list of values that you want to use for further calculations or charting. The syntax is simple.
INDEX(range of values, row, column)
Example: INDEX(A1:A10,5) returns A5
Note: Index returns a reference to A5, not the value itself. So you can use INDEX where ranges are expected. For ex. INDEX(A1:A10,5) : INDEX(A1:A10,9) same as A5:A9
Fore more on INDEX formula:
PS: You can also use OFFSET formula in this situations. Please keep in mind that OFFSET is volatile and hence can slow down your workbooks if you use it alot.
Use lookup formulas
Interactive dashboards require formulas that dynamically lookup a set of values among heaps and return them to charts, summaries etc. This is where lookup formulas come handy. Check out our LOOKUP page for comprehensive information on this.
Use SUMIFS, SUMPRODUCT
SUMIFS & SUMPRODUCT formulas will become your best friends when it comes to extracting summaries from mountains of data based on user interaction. Once you master these, you can analyze & visualize any amount of data with ease.
- Introduction to SUMIFS formula, examples & explanation
- Introduction to SUMPRODUCT formula, examples & explanation
- Formula Forensics 007 – Sumproduct
- Advanced SUMPRODUCT examples
- More on SUMPRODUCT, SUMIFS, COUNTIFS, SUMIF, Array formulas
Use Picture links
Picture links are live snapshots of ranges of cells. If you create a picture link from cells A1:D5, then although it looks like a picture, it is a live image of the cells A1:D5. So when the cells change, the picture gets updated too, thus creating interactive effect.
For more on picture links:
- Introduction to picture links – examples, information & uses
- Picture links in practice – example dashboards & charts
Use Pivot tables
Pivot tables can process large volumes of data and give you desired summaries with in split seconds. They are by nature not dynamic (if data or criteria changes, you need to refresh them). Starting Excel 2010, you can use Slicers to interactively update pivot tables (hence pivot charts) . Even in earlier versions, you can use simple macros to automatically refresh pivot tables whenever users modify a form control or do something else. This allows for powerful dashboard reporting all the while keeping your calculation engine light weight.
For more on pivot tables:
Use conditional formatting
Conditional formatting plays an important role in interactive dashboards by highlighted changed portions of worksheet. This further improves the interactive feel and guides users attention.
More on conditional formatting:
Do you make your dashboards interactive?
I love keeping my workbooks, models & dashboards interactive. Simple features like form controls, slicers can add a lot of wow factor to your workbooks.
What about you? Do you make interactive dashboards & charts? What are your favorite techniques? Please share using comments.
Now, if you excuse me, I will go and resolve a fight between my daughter and son. They both want remote control the TV even though it is switched off.
More on Dashboards: Check out Excel Dashboards page & resources for making dashboards page.
63 Responses to “To-do List with Priorities using Excel”
Very useful, you always give us good ideas for our excel files. Thanks
I've been working on calendars leagues. If you must watch a bit on my blog. http://economiaemergente.com/
EXCELLENTE!!!!
Needed .. thanks for sharing
[...] To-do List with Priorities using Excel [...]
Excellent spreadsheet. Nice work.
Ciao Peppe!, Tante grazie per compartire il tuo eccellentissimo lavoro in Excel. Tu hai a web blog? - Grazie Chandoo per la publicazione.
Hello Peppe, Thank you so much for sharing your most excellent work in Excel. Have you a web blog? - Thanks Chandoo for publication.
Hi Jose,
tanks for your appreciations and tks to Chandoo for publishing
my little job. it's a pleasure for me to be mentioned on my guru's blog.
Just to reply to Jose, I don't have a blog, but if you want to share some ideas or need some help don't hesitate to contact me also on twitter like @peppinogreco.
Regards
Peppe
Hi Peppe!
Thank you for this very useful excel spreadsheet!
Great!
I've learned a little bit of VBA during the last year, and get addicted to it, but sometimes, it makes us forget how powerful excel is, without macros.
Nice post!
Cauê
Hi Chandru,
A very good post. Though I had been reading your posts for a longer time, did not post any questions so far except for wishing and appreciating.
I have a question here. I had attempted to do something on my own (a little R & D) on the new year resolution template itself. However, I could not do it fully. Thankfully, you had provided the link for each step , which was exactly what I was looking for 🙂
I had done with the check boxes and also conditional formatting. I am glad indeed. I am able to highlight a row when a check box is checked. However, the value of the checkbox gets printed in the same cell which it was linked to. How can I avoid it ? I could not see it in the sample excel files you had provided.
I appreciate your help in this.
Cheers,
Raghavan alias Saravanan M
Jeddah | Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
Hi Raghavan... Thanks for your comments and I am glad you are trying to build this on your own. There is no way we can avoid printing the check box value in linked cell. If you do not want to see "TRUE or FALSE" in a cell, you do one of the following.
Dal Messico grazie tanti Peppe.
A great idea, thanks for shearing it with all of us.
Daniel
Lovely idea - downloading now.
What software is used to create the animated gif of the template in action? Love to replicate to simple demos on my site.
Cheers
Glen
@Glen
Chandoo uses Camtasia Studio to make the animated GIF's
You can read what else Chandoo uses here: http://chandoo.org/wp/about/what-we-use/
Cheers
I should have checked first.
G
Still defeated.
What I am looking for is the TORN edge effect as applied to the screen capture. I can see how to do this for captured images, not vidoes.
I wonder if they are post processed in some way?
Cheers
G
Sorted.
Capture white screen with torn paper edge with SnagIT
Make the inner of border transparent (Photoshop)
Add the image as an overlay in Camtasia.
Sorry to hijack an Excel thread with this - its been bugging me for a while.
G
Raghavan
I just make the font white for the cell linked to the checkbox or if you have shading applied then font colour = shading so its there but is not seen or printed.
John
Excellent! Thank you very much.
Excellent thanks!
Happy New Year.
Looks simple but excellent. Never knew you could do this without VBA.
Thanks Pepe
good day,
Please, how can I create a chart with scroll bar that is also dynamic in PPT.
I created the chart in Excel, but I need this information to be presented dynamically in powerpoint and when I put the bar rolls loses functionality. please can you help me?
Come nella migliore tradizione:grandi ma semplici idde dall'Italia.
bravo Peppe
This was outstanding. I have had two bosses give me to-do lists that I was very unhappy with. I went and added 15 more lines to this and it was really easy to so with a little reformatting and changing some links. THANKS!!!
Thanks. really usuful. Will be waiting for such thing in future.
Great tutorial! It would be interesting if someone could explain how to do the chart with detail: how to insert the values of the horizontal axis, to create the horizontal bar (the outlines) and the bar itself, etc
Hi Juan...
See this page for a tutorial on the chart - http://chandoo.org/wp/2009/12/17/quick-thermometer-chart/
[...] To-do List with Priorities using Excel [...]
Good Concept!
Downloaded it but, my Excel 2007 hangs and I have to recover it few times. Finally it opens but, everything is distorted.
Am I doing something wrong?
-DJ
Interesting idea.
You give e new way to track my actual planning.
But instead of using thermometer in this case, we can use a simple bar chart , with data is the total done.
Reasoning for that, with thermometer, you have to format all the small part of data with the same color. If you have more than 10 parts, it will take your time to finish.
I tested and it shown the same.
I'm searching for How to automatically add check box link to a new cells when we add new item?
Thanks for your interesting idea.
Thank you Peppe & Chandoo for sharing an awesome idea.
How do i increase the list ? I cant just drag down can I ? the check boxes perform the same way
VERY EXCELLENT THANK YOU VERY MUCH.
How do you increase the list? Formatting of the check boxes and shading etc does not copy correctly if using copy and paste or dragging cells down...
Thanks for this useful to do list.
I have the same question as TADOVN. This blog doesn't properly give instruction on how to add new task row. Following are my queries.
1) How do I add a new row?
2) If I copy paste the last row to create a new row, the check box get duplicated, i.e. if I click on the new check box on the new row, the previous check box also gets checked.
So the simple question is.. how do I add a new row so that it behaves the same way as other rows?
Thank you very much! Great to do list template.
Thanks for the template.
From an NGO organisation in Malaysia
Will someone please answer the question about how to add additional rows to this list? I love it, but this is a fatal flaw, as I frequently have many more tasks.
Thank you!
Below is how I added additional rows:
1) Select both columns H and N, right clicked, and clicked Unhide to reveal the formulas.
2) Select row 12 on the To Do List, copy it, and insert it below in the next row.
3) Change the 12 in cell C22 to a 13.
3) Drag your mouse and copy the formulas from cells I15, J15, and K15.
4) Paste the formulas below in cells I16, J16, and K16.
5) Right click on the check box in cell F22.
6) Click Format Control.
7) Click the Control tab.
8) In the Cell Link box, change the I15 to I16.
9) Repeat the steps above. (Change I16 in the Cell Link box to I17...I17 to I18, etc.)
10) If you are not seeing Format Control when you right click the check box, you need to make the Developer Tab available.
Leah,
If you follow my previous instructions, you still may need to go back and change the formulas in column K. They calculate the priority weights and go in consecutive order as you go down the column:
IFERROR(1/E10,0)
IFERROR(1/E11,0)
IFERROR(1/E12,0), etc.
Some of you who are more Excel savy may be able to figure out how to copy the formulas quicker. This is just the way I figured it out.
Thank you Dennis; I will try that!
I am sure I would love this and it will help me to accomplice my tasks efficiently . Thanks Buddy
How would I be able to delete one of the row (not use 6 for example) so it won't calculate it with the progress?
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Thank you so much for this post. I took me a bit to figure out how the checkboxes link to the rest of the sheet, but now that I've got it I've created a new page for every day so I can track tasks going forward. I've also added work tasks side-by-side with personal tasks. Once I did that I also thought it would be neat to see how productive I am week over week so I added a nice summery page. The summary builds on the percentage completion for personal and work tasks.
Love this template - so versatile and yet simple.
My next project is to get standard weighting for certain tasks so I don't have to keep remembering them.
Cheers,
Victor
I like this template. I may modify how the checkboxes work though for a couple reasons:
1) It's a pain to add more rows. If I want to add 10 more rows, it appears that I have to re-point each new object to the appropriate link-cell. Otherwise, they all point back to the copied row - checking one causes all of them to check.
2) I can't group and collapse rows in the checklist without all the objects stacking together and remaining visible in the lowest non-collapsed row. With a simple "x", this would be ok.
One solution would be to have a simple "x" instead of a checkbox object. I could just use an "x" to mark complete, and make the TRUE/FALSE based on an If formula (If "x" then TRUE; otherwise FALSE).
I downloaded the file, but it is a ZIP file with several subfolders and xml files. There is no workbook here. How do I open this in Excel?
thank you for the help and excellent ideas you share.
@Kris
Yes, Excel files are special Zip files that actually contain a number of files including your data
If the file opens like that save it locally as a *.zip file and rename it to a *.xlsx file
Open with excel normally
How do you change the color when it is completed....I have multiple companies and need to color code this template.
Thank you.
@S.F
Use Conditional Formatting
Hello! I have added additional rows, fixed it so that the check boxes work individually, AND made it so that the #% changes when each box is checked -- however the status bar won't move past the midway mark.
Any ideas on how I can get the progress bar to fill up the entire way once the list is complete?
If you right click the status bar, select 'Select Data' and go to 'Chart Data Range' and revise to include your expanded range. The bar chart colors may default to a predefined style. Right click the chart to reformat the Chart Area.
Or, to change the bar colors, I populated all rows w/ activities and rank and then left clicked the bar chart color that I wanted to change - went up to the ribbon under the home tab, selected the new bar color from the fill color dropdown.
Love the instant gratification of the status bar! Genius!
Thank you so much, what a great tool! God bless you for doing this for free!!
Awesome
Nice to show power of excel.
Over in the Chandoo.org Forums, Asshu has updated this witha VB Interface
Have a look and use if from: http://chandoo.org/forum/threads/to-do-list-vb-interface.28973/
Dear All,
There are good job done here & its very helpful for all.
God Bless You to you all for your valuable working.
Regards,
Chirag
Hi guys,
I've added additional rows, but the percentages in the thermo-meter don't reflect this when the boxes are checked. I'm lost with how to change this, so any assistance would be greatly appreciated!
Jake
@Jake
Can you please ask the question on the Chandoo.org Forums
https://chandoo.org/forum/
Please attach a sample file to simplify the solution
Hi Chandoo, how you do it for all this check list. it is using Excel VBA, I am not good it that.. still leaning part. and I was trying to figure out. Trying to understand all vba code and meaning and when I use which code.
do you have any guide line on this, i mean. Exp: dim is what, string etc:
for all this checking list does need to use VBA?
Thankyou
Peggy