Ever seen a glaring, over the top, wow-I-am-sooo-cool type of spreadsheet? Lets call them Gangnam spreadsheets!
Gangnam what?!?
If you have never heard about Gangnam style, do not worry. Just like you I too was living under a rock for about a week ago. Then I watched the awesome Gangnam style song. And now I am hooked. You can see it below (or here):
My Korean is just as good as my tap dancing – lousy and non-existent. But I can search. As per wikipedia, the song refers to
“Gangnam Style” is a Korean neologism that refers to a lifestyle associated with the Gangnam district of Seoul, where people are trendy, hip and exude a certain supposed “class”. … Psy likened the Gangnam District to Beverly Hills, California, and said in an interview that he intended a twisted sense of humor by claiming himself to be “Gangnam Style” when everything about the song, dance, looks, and the music video is far from being such a high class. In another interview with CNN, Psy added that:
“People who are actually from Gangnam never proclaim that they are — it’s only the posers and wannabes that put on these airs and say that they are “Gangnam Style” — so this song is actually poking fun at those kinds of people who are trying so hard to be something that they’re not.”
[more]
What has all this got to do with Excel?
Oh I am coming to the point. One of the key ingredients of being awesome in Excel is,
To make our Excel workbooks communicate best by avoiding over the top formatting, unnecessary bells & whistles and focusing on what our users want.
But Excel being a feature rich software, it does have various so called Gangnam styles – superfluous 3d effects, formatting options, charting choices and as such.
Today, lets talk Excel formatting – Gangnam style
Some of my favorite Gangnam formatting tips are,
- Using too many tab colors on your excel workbooks [how to do this]
- Overdose of conditional formats
- 3D charting effects [how to do this]
- Comment shapes and formats [how to do this]
- Rotated text
What are your favorite Gangnam formatting tips?
Go ahead and post a Gangnam formatting tip. Lets all make Excel a stylish place. Post using comments.
Bonus: Gangnam style ft. 3 kids & a dad with cam
As you can guess, my kids love the song. So yesterday evening we played the video on TV and they danced. See their awesome steps below (or click here):
PS: Sowmya is my brothers daughter, the other 2 are ours.
PPS: The loud rept(“hehe hahaha”,20) kind of laugh in background is mine!
9 Responses to “Show forecast values in a different color with this simple trick [charting]”
While this works in a pinch, it clearly "lightens" the colors of the entire chart. Depending on where you use this, it will be blatantly obvious that you don't know what you are doing and present a poor looking graph.
Why not separate the data into different segments when charting and have as many colors as you have data points? You might have to create a new legend and/or repeat the chart in "invisible ink", but it would be cleaner and more consistent when new or updated data becomes available.
While I think I agree that doing it "properly" via a second series is preferable, I don't necessarily agree that making the entirety of the "future" (data, gridlines, and even the axis) semi-transparent is "poor looking". I think it could be seen as adding more emphasis to the "future-ness" of the forecast data.
In short, it's another tool for the toolbox, even if it's never needed.
Simply and clever 🙂
Quick & effective, cool. thanks.
I always use the dummy series.
Nice little trick, thanks very much!
Two sets of data better. Control is much better.
You can use the same chart next month to see what is actual and what is forecast.
To use this trick, I think grid lines has to be removed, that will make the graphic much more sharp.
to be honest, i dont understand why there is needed to do this way... in this case horizontal lines will be pale as well. then why a just can't change the color of the line partly???
Great tutorial. Thanks for the tutorial!