Can we make a calendar using Pivot Tables?!?
Of course we can. Today let us learn a simple technique to create calendar style reports using Pivot tables.
Thanks to Rob for inspiration
Before making any progress, let me thank Rob from PowerPivotPro for the inspiration. Recently he wrote an article explaining how to use PowerPivot & DAX formulas to create calendar charts in Excel. I applied similar technique to Pivot tables.
Demo of Pivot Calendar
See a quick demo of pivot calendar chart before learning how to do this.
Creating a Pivot Table Calendar
Step 1: Set up an entire year of dates in a list
Lets assume, we want to make the calendar for year 2012. So write that in a cell (G3). Now, in a range of 366 cells, generate all the dates for the year (2012) using simple formulas.
- First date will be =DATE(G3,1,1)
- Next 365 dates will be previous date + 1
Step 2: Calculate Day, Month, Year and Weekday
Using DAY(), MONTH(), YEAR(), WEEKDAY() calculate the day, month, year and weekday for each of the 366 days.
Step 3: Determine the week number in a month
Now comes the tricky part. We need to find out which row each date should be displayed. First take a look at this illustration.
The logic for calculating row numbers is very simple:
- First day of a month is always in row number 1.
- If a day is not Sunday, we just use previous row number
- On Sundays, we just increment the previous row number and use it.
All of this can be expressed in a simple IF formula =IF(D7=D6,IF(F7=1,G6+1,G6),1)
- D7 contains this month, D6 is previous day’s month
- F7 contains weekday, will be 1 for Sunday and 7 for Saturday
- G6 contains previous row number (weeknum)
Step 4: Dealing with Leap years
So far we are good, except for a minor glitch. Certain years have 366 days (for example 2012) while others dont. That means, depending the year, we need to either use 365 rows or 366 rows of our data while generating the pivot report. To do this, we create a named range tblDates that refers to below formula:
=IF(Calcs!$D$3,Calcs!$B$5:$G$371,Calcs!$B$5:$G$370)
Note: D3 is TRUE when an year is leap year.
Step 5: Create pivot table that shows calendar
Now, we need to create a pivot table from the range tblDates.
Set up your pivot table like this:
Step 6: Add a slicer
To enable users to select a particular month interactively, just add a slicer on months. For this,
- Select any cell in the pivot table and go to Options Ribbon > Insert Slicer
- Select Month as field to insert a slicer.
- Adjust slicer properties to show items in 6 columns (Slicer Options Ribbon > Columns)
- Done!
At this point, you can interactively select a month & see the corresponding calendar.
Related: More examples on Slicers
Further Enhancements
Now that the basic Pivot Calendar is ready, try these ideas:
- Use a spin button / slider control to interactively adjust the year. Remember, when you do this, you need to refresh the pivot table in background using a simple macro.
- Adjust week start to Monday: Likewise, you can modify your formulas to adjust weekstart to Monday or any other day you fancy.
Using Pivot Calendar as a Chart
Of course, having a mere pivot calendar is not much fun. But you can apply this idea to create a calendar chart. See this:
Calendar Chart Demo:
How to create this Calendar chart?
To keep things simple, lets understand how to create this chart with just one metric – Employee productivity.
- Once the pivot calendar is ready, we add extra rows between each line in the calendar.
- Now, lets say, we have our employee productivity details listed by date in a table.
- Then, using lookup formulas, we fetch productivity for each day in the cell below.
- Once all the values are fetched, just select all these cells and add conditional formatting > color scale to them.
- Format the color scale settings so that you get desired colors.
- And you are done!
More on Conditional Formatting
Video Explaining Pivot Calendar & Chart
Like this concept? Watch below video to understand how the whole thing is made.
[watch this video on our youtube channel]
Download Pivot Calendar Template
Click here to download pivot calendar & calendar chart templates. Play with them. Plug your own values and see what happens.
PS: You need Excel 2010 to view this file. Please enable macros to get full effect.
Do you like Pivot Calendar Idea?
I am very excited to try this out in a client project sometime soon. I think a set up like this can be used when analyzing monthly data like employee attendance, vacations, productivity, shipments, meeting schedules, project milestones etc. Since such data is represented in calendar format in real life, your audience would find calendar metaphor easy to understand. That said, any data like KPI trends, sales, visits, calls etc. should always be represented as a line /bar charts rather than calendar charts.This way, we can spot trends quickly and understand data better.
What about you? Do you like this idea? Are you planning to use a pivot calendar / calendar chart sometime in future? Please share your thoughts using comments.
Calendars & Similar ideas:
Please go thru below links to learn more about calendars & visualizing data:
22 Responses to “Formula Forensic No 019. Converting uneven Text Strings to Time”
Why not let the TIME function take care of the math:
=TIME(LEFT(TEXT(A1,"000000"),2),MID(TEXT(A1,"000000"),3,2),RIGHT(TEXT(A1,"000000"),2))
I was going to point out the same thing, except to note that useing the time function and doing the divide method are not interchangeable.
I have spent hours investigating a spreadsheet working with a couple of years worth of hourly data, and found that the reason things weren't working is because the rounding on the divide method is only close to the correct time values. In order to have it work for comparisons, (like sub-totaling by time value, or pivoting) you MUST use the TIME function.
Great use of the TEXT function, Hui. I will be using this concept for sure.
Why not just.
=TEXT(A1,"00\:00\:00")*1
Regards
Elegant!
Hi Elias,
I tried to use your formula. But, it doesn't seem to work for me. I am getting an error message "The formula you typed contains an error". It seems I have the problem in using \: in the format. How can I overcome this?
Thanks
Manick, it isn't the /: that causes the problem. If you copy/paste it, you're getting “'s instead of the actual quotation marks that Excel uses. Change the quotation marks by deleting from the pasted formula and retype them.
Hi Manick...
use this alternate formula :
=1*TEXT(A1,"00"":""00"":""00")
note twice double quote each side of :
@Manick,
Did you copy the formula and pasted in Excel or did you typed? Also, do you use , or ; as separator of arguments?
Regards
@Elias: I had no problem using your formula, in fact, I have used your method to convert a number such as 20120419 to an Excel date using =TEXT(A1,"0000\/00\/00")*1. Thanks for posting.
@Joe: For date convertion you can use this as well.
=TEXT(A1,"00-00-00")*1
Regards
Sweet! It appears this also works with =TEXT(A1,"0-00-00")*1. I come from the old days when you counted every byte. I also like to try an make formulas as small as possible for the fun of it 🙂
Elias's suggestion is the simplest, but here is yet another way with TIME and MOD functions...
=TIME(MOD(A2/10000,100),MOD(A2/100,100),MOD(A2,100))
Since the seconds appear to always be 0, why not simply the input to minutes and above and save yourself the trouble of typing those zeroes...
0 => 0:00
1 => 1:00
10 => 10:00
100 => 1:00:00
etc.
Then just use this formula...
=TEXT(A1,"0\:00\:")*1
@ Rick, the numbers to convert are no typed, they are imported. Then your formula will return the wrong result.
Regards.
Hmm! My formula lost some backslash-zero combinations (two of them to be exact). The formula was supposed to be this...
=TEXT(A1,"0\:00\:\zero\zero")*1
where the words "zero" should actually be the number 0. Another way to write the formula is this...
=TEXT(A1,"0\:00\:""00""")*1
Hi Master,
While writing the formulae you have considered only upto "seconds factor" . I think you should take the centi-seconds factor also to achieve best results. Please look into it and rectify the problem...?
For Example.
In horse racing timings are noted in minute, seconds and centi-seconds, like if a horse finished in 70 seconds over a scurry of 1200 metres, is noted as 1.10 min. Nowadays it is noted in centi-seconds everywhere, like 70.00 if you want to convert it to centi seconds (should multiply by 100) = 7000 centi seconds. If you put this figure into your formula as a general number (7000) it will return as 1:10:00. As per your formula, it should be taken as 1 hour 10 seconds 0 minutes. However for a racing enthusiast like me it can be taken as 1 minute 10 seconds also.
Just look what happens if we race goers use this figure as 7000 centi seconds in your formulae, it will correctly show as 1 minute 10 seconds(?) Suppose a horse finishing over a 1200m in 70.60 seconds or in racing terms written as 1.10.60 mins, where 1 minute 10 seconds, & 60 centi-seconds can be counted as 7060, if you put this figure in the formula it will return as 1 minute 11 seconds, that is correct.
My point is if you can incorporate Centi Seconds in the formulae, it would be of great help to us also.
Thanks and regards.
Rajagopal (Mumbai)
Awesome techniques !
I tried with 235960 just to see if it will fail but this is great.
Although a little longer, this too work:
=CHOOSE(LEN(A2);A2/(24*3600);A2/(24*3600);LEFT(A2;1)/(24*60) + RIGHT(A2;2)/(24*3600);LEFT(A2;2)/(24*60) + RIGHT(A2;2)/(24*3600);LEFT(A2;1)/24 + MID(A2;2;2)/(24*60) + RIGHT(A2;2)/(24*3600);LEFT(A2;2)/24 + MID(A2;3;2)/(24*60) + RIGHT(A2;2)/(24*3600))
Converting uneven Text Strings to Time I have imported some data that comes in as a number that I need to convert to h:mm.
Just come across this while googling
find interesting challenge and come up with this
=TEXT(TEXT(SUBSTITUTE(A1,RIGHT(A1,1),""),"000000"),"00\:00\:00")
I need to convert a string of numbers representing average minutes, to reflect correct time values. For example, the numbers below currently represent 5.79 minutes, 15.82 minutes, etc.
I need to convert these values to their correct corresponding value within time parameters. So 5.79 would be something close to 5 minutes and 45 seconds.
5.79
15.82
3.92
12.40
6.70
3.62
I know there has to be a way to compute this in Excel, it can do anything, I believe!
Thank you for any and all assistance~
@Renee... You can use a formula like this. Assuming A1 has the minutes.seconds,
=INT(A1) + MOD(A1, 1)*0.6
If you want to see it in 5 minutes 45 seconds format, use
=INT(A1) & " mins " & ROUND(MOD(A1, 1)*0.6,2) & " secs"