If I need some charting inspiration, I always visit New York Times. Their interactive visualizations are some of the best you can find anywhere. Clear, beautifully crafted and powerful. Long time readers of Chandoo.org knew that I like to learn from visualizations in NY Times & redo them using Excel.
Today let me present you one such chart.
How the tax burden has changed over the years – Visual story by NY Times
First take a look at this story on New York times website. Go ahead and check it out, I will wait for you.
Back already. Good.
Now that you have seen a well presented story with the support of panel charts, let us learn how to re-create such charts using Excel.
Look at the tax burden Excel chart
Take a look at the excel implementation of this chart below. Read on to learn how to create this.
[click here to see larger version]
Recipe for creating this chart using Excel
We need below ingredients to make this chart using Excel
- Raw data
- One area chart and few lines on top
- Simple formulas
- One Slicer (to select an year)
- One large cup of coffee or whatever else that you gulp
So if you are ready, lets start cooking.
Step 0: Arrange data
This is a prerequisite for any charting exercise. Although we can work with data in any shape, for quick results, arrange your data in this format:
In the example file you will find data for overall tax burden for all 9 tax brackets in the years 1980-2010.
Step 1: Create an area chart from all the data
Simple, select tax bracket & tax percentage rows and create an area chart. This is how it should look.
Step 2: Insert 2 columns after every tax bracket in your source data
Very simple, just add 2 blank columns after every tax bracket to your source data. This will change your chart to,
Step 3: Adjust data settings so that blank cells are treated as gaps
Right click on the chart, go to Select Data > Hidden & Empty cells
Specify that all blank cells should be treated as gaps. See below.
Now, your chart should look like this:
Step 4: Add a line to the chart & format it
Although our chart looks almost like NY Times chart, we still need to show a line on top. For this,
- Go to your data, reselect all the tax burden %s and copy them.
- Come back to the chart, select it and paste. (more on this)
- Excel will add this new data as another series to chart
- Right on this new series, choose Change series chart type
- Select Line chart
- Format the chart so that it looks like below.
Step 5: Remove grid lines & fake them using additional series
Excel chart’s grid lines always show up behind the data. For our chart, we want them on top. So let just delete grid lines and fake them using additional lines on the chart.
For this,
- In your data, add 9 extra rows at bottom (why 9? because we want to show one grid line for every 5% and the maximum we have is around 45%)
- Fill first row with 0.05, second with 0.1, third with 0.15… ninth with 0.45
- Copy all these and paste them in the chart. You should have nine lines across the chart.
- Now, format each line so that it looks like a dull white line with dashes.
- When you are done, the final output should look like this:
Step 6: Remove horizontal axis (x-axis) labels & fake them too
Again, horizontal axis labels produced by Excel are useless for us. So we will create our own.
- First delete the existing axis.
- Then add a text box to the chart and place it where axis should be.
- Type the values 1980 few spaces 2010.
- Adjust the font size to 7pt.
- Now play with the text box until you are satisfied for one tax bracket.
- Then copy paste it 8 more times and adjust their positions.
Although we could automate this step, it felt un-necessary as the years are not going to change.
Our chart is almost ready
At this stage, our chart looks like below.
It is almost ready, but we need few more additions.
- We need to add labels to first & last point in each tax bracket.
- We need a mechanism so that user can select a particular year.
- When any year is selected, we need to show that year’s tax burden %.
Adding labels for first and last points
This is done by adding one more series of values. This new series (lets call it label-first-last) will have values for only 1980 & 2010. Everything else will be NA().
The formula I used to generate this series is,
=IF(OR(year=1980,year=2010),taxburden,NA())
Once this series is added, we just format it so that only markers are shown (no line) and then add data labels. Format the labels to show in 0% format. Adjust their size and position.
Also add arrow shaped boxes on top to label each tax bracket.
Enabling year selection thru Slicers
[This works only for Excel 2010 or above]
In a blank sheet type the years 1980 thru 2010. Select them and create a pivot.
Once the pivot is ready, insert a slicer for the years field.
For detailed steps on slicer creation see this illustration.
Figuring out which year is selected
Once the slicer is ready, we need to figure out if user made a selection thru slicer. To do this,
- Use a simple formula to check how many values are shown in the pivot table (ex: COUNTA(pivot!A:A) )
- If only one value is shown, then extract it by referring to first row item in pivot (=pivot!A4)
Adding labels for selected year
Once we know which year is selected, we can easily create one more series that has NA() for all values except selected year. The rest you know.
Final outcome – Tax burden over the years chart using Excel
Download this example & Play with it
Click here to download the tax burden chart. Play with it to learn more. Examine the formulas in “Data” sheet & scroll down on “Chart” sheet for step by step instructions.
Do you like this chart?
I really loved how NY Times has been able to tell a very good story by using multiple panel charts. These are great way to examine multidimensional data and understand what is going on.
What about you? Do you like this chart? Please share your thoughts and ideas using comments.
More such charting inspiration
If you are looking for some fresh charting inspiration & ideas, you are at the right place. Check out these examples to get started:
- Introduction to Panel Charts & How to make them in Excel
- Usain Bolt vs. Rest of runners – Interactive visualization in Excel
- Impact of Grammy award on sales – Grammy bump interactive chart
- Visualizing world education rankings – excel chart
- Facebook Privacy policies as a panel chart
- More charts & visualizations
Do you want to create powerful & insightful charts like these?
If you want to learn how to create these types of charts, consider enrolling in our Excel School program. Be warned, you will become unusually awesome in Excel by going thru our course 🙂
32 Responses to “More than 3 Conditional Formats in Excel”
Dude,
Long time... whts up , I see that urs is the only business which is posting a "Excel" lent growth in this recessionary market....
Still alive ... so you will be able to reach me if make an attempt... 🙂
V E R Y N I C E !!!!
Hi Chandoo.
When I use your macro in my file, I keep getting a Compile Error because the "cell" variable is not defined.
Any suggestions?
@Lincoln: Did you have "option explicit" on?
I am sorry, I didn't define the cell variable.
you can add this line to the code just below the line "dim i"
dim cellLet me know if you still get this error...
Ah. I've simply declared cell as a range.
All good now
Noob at work.
Thanks for the article. Very helpful. 🙂
very, very helpful. I didn't know what "define named ranges" meant. one of my colleagues figured it out. I suggest you add the instruction "go to menu - insert/name/define and then make sure the cells at the bottom of the box change to reflect new values if you redefine the range." thanks.
Quite Intresting. If anyone could help. I am trying to do something like this but i want to define values and colours of the value in a range of cells ( Similiar) but i want the other cells to change colour when the value is same as the range defined. ANy help. I want instantaneous( Like conditional formatting) not like running macro.
@Jahabar: Welcome to PHD and thanks for the comments.
If your source range and target range have same dimensions and source range has 4 different formats (conditional formatting limitation, unless you are using excel 2007) you can do this. If you have more than 4 formats then you may have to use VBA (and create an event like worksheet_change and monitor the range).
Let me know if you come across a simple non-vba solution for this. 🙂
very nice post...
May I suggest a little modification of the code?
Adding "Application.ScreenUpdating = False" at the beggining of the macro and "Application.ScreenUpdating = True" at the end speeds up significantly the whole procedure. As well as omitting "Operation:=xlNone, SkipBlanks:=False, Transpose:=False".
Not a big deal in this example, but when formatting a larger range of cells, the difference is marked. I've tried to format the number 1457 of cells and the formatting was done 11 seconds faster. :-O
[...] you can overcome the conditional formatting limitation using VBA macros (again, if you are new to excel, you may want to wait few weeks before plunging in to [...]
Hi Chandoo
Thanks for this macro. I have done few changes to this macro to suit my needs. I had removed the defined names data2use and conditions2use to ActiveWindow.RangeSelection.Address
This way I can select the cells that require conditional formatting and then run the macro.
Kind Regards,
Vasanth
Chandoo, I am using 2007. I noticed the conditional formatting options are different - and they have some built in funtictions for stop light displays, and other dashboard type elements. My question is this, I need to display more colors in the stop light than the standard 3. The World Health Org (WHO) has a Pandemic Flu alert level between 0-6, so i wanted to drive a sharepoint dashboard using excel based on 7 distinct levels. Suggestions?
@ASM: very good idea. you can use font based symbols instead of excel traffic light icons to achieve this. the character "=" becomes a small circle when you change the font to "webdings". So you just need to insert a bunch of = signs and use conditional formatting to change the font color. If you need to combine numbers with symbols, then you can use 2 columns instead of one and format them accordingly. Let me know if you need some more help with this.
Also, if possible, share with us your dashboard when it is ready.
[...] Once we calculate values for all team members using the above formula, we can apply conditional formatting to make the heat map. In Excel 2007, this is one step. In earlier versions of excel, you need to specify 3 conditions to make the heatmap look hot enough or use a macro to get over the 3 conditional formats limitation. [...]
Chandoo,
Why do you use the "conditions2use" since you can change the VBA and replace "conditions2use" with "data2use" and you won't have to create a zone for conditional formating equal to the data zone.
The Data will be formated according the "formats2use". Just one thing, if you plan to have some "0" on your data zone, they will be formated like the first cell above your "formats2use" (the green cell with "Formats" inside in your exemple".
That's why you should leave a white empty cell above the first cell of the "formats2use" zone.
Regards,
Pitichat
Seeing as no one has posted what they actually might use something like this for here's my 2cents;
I used the same concepts to build a heatmap of a casino gaming floor, with each populated cell representing a gaming machine (Slot Machine), some simple metric bucketing to determine different shades for the cells, user selectable colours, ability to pick a 'machine' (click on a cell) and repaint the 'floor' showing only machines with similar charateristics, select a value range and repaint the 'floor' showing only the 'machines' within the value range. Users could switch between metrics and repaint the the floor.
It took a while to put together, but once in use was rolled out to four casinos and used for 4 years. It provided a portable (i.e. no custom software), easy to understand way to manage product from individual machine to groups / classes of product and made it very easy to see how products were performing in geographic relation to each other (something that tables & graphs can't easily do)
Needless to say it "wowed" many people who only saw Excel as a tool for managing numbers and table based reports
Being excel just about any user could maintain spreadsheet.
@ Justin B - Hey Justin, that counds AWESOME! Can I get a copy of the casino tracker, I work within a similar industry and would love to see how you've constructed it.
Also, from using this heatmap, I think I'm getting confused. To make the map change color, I thought you had to change the DATA2USE cells, but I see it only changes if you change the vales of thew cells within the CONDITIONS2USE cells. Am I thinking this wrong?????
Thanks all, this is REALLY making my life easier!!
Hi Dude,
Thanks for this very useful macro. That was very helpful.
Kepp up the good work.
Cheers.
Explanation like yours is so important to everyone that want to learn more and more in Excel. Thanks a lot. You are the man ! 🙂
[...] http://chandoo.org/wp/2008/10/14/more-than-3-conditional-formats-in-excel/ [...]
Chandoo,
If I wanted to replace the numbers 1-9 with text A-I, what would I need to do to the macro to make it work correctly?
Thanks!
@Lee
If the numbers are alone and not part of larger numbers >10 or with text you can simply use this formula
=CHAR(A1+64)Change A1 to your cell
Copy Down/Across as required
Then select the new cells and copy/paste as Values over themselves.
I'm trying to do a drop down list that will allow me to select a color and when I select that color it will change my cell to that color. i cannot use contion formating because I have 5 colors. Can you help me with this?
thanks
This tool was great. Can you please suggest a way to include conditions like if value in a cell lies in a range color some other cell red.
What do I need to change in the programing if I have a mix of numbers and letters. Example; 5003, 2B01, W005, 1020. I think the problem is the CInt code but I'm not sure.
EXCELlent - was able to use your macro with no problems. Found that modifying it to use the DATA2USE range achived the same result as using the condition2use range. If the two ranges were equal, your way allows the data range to have completely different values and still have the same color format at the end.
My data is a little different
I have an irregular shaped building with students in it.
I have a list of students assigned to the rooms with the courses they are on
and a color code for the courses
would there be a way of using indirect to translate the student names to color code the rooms to what courses they are on?
[...] hi Check below link More than 3 Conditional Formats in Microsoft Excel - How to? | Chandoo.org - Learn Microsoft Excel O... [...]
The ability to conditional format a range of cells based on criteria in a different, but matching for size, range of cells is exactly what I've been looking for. Unfortunately the macro falls over at the line conditions (i) = CInt (cell.value). I have specified the 3 rangenames, working in excel 2003 but cannot get it to work. Any ideas. I've checked rangenames several times (0-16 being used) but no luck. Thanks
Hello you also can use this code to force ur worksheet to run with more then on condition.
in this case the condition = case like in example if u want to format something between of the range 0 to 100 for a color
Set I = Intersect(Target, Range("B2:B8")) <-- thatch the rage u want to work with just set it up for range of cell u want to use to format
the second formula will show u Interior color nr index just time it and when u format the cell with a color it will show nr in the cell
enjoy
Private Sub Worksheet_Change(ByVal Target As Range)Set I = Intersect(Target, Range("B2:B8"))
If Not I Is Nothing Then
Select Case Target
Case 0 To 100: NewColor = 37 ' light blue
Case 101 To 200: NewColor = 46 ' orange
Case 201 To 300: NewColor = 12 ' dark yellow
Case 301 To 400: NewColor = 10 ' green
Case 401 To 600: NewColor = 3 ' red
Case 601 To 1000: NewColor = 20 ' lighter blue
End Select
Target.Interior.ColorIndex = NewColor
End If
End Sub
Private Sub Worksheet_SelectionChange(ByVal Target As Range)
Range("F1:F1") = Range("F1:F1").Interior.ColorIndex
End Sub
Hi Chandoo,
I tried to add the "More than 3 conditional formats for Excel" VBA macro
to my Excel 2008 for Mac and it didn't work. Would this VBA macro work
with Excel 2011 for Mac? Does it have to be a certain version: Student,
Home & Office, or Standard?
Thanks for your help.
Tom
[…] here is one vba macro that might be better if need lots of cases http://chandoo.org/wp/2008/10/14/more-than-3-conditional-formats-in-excel/ […]