One of the popular uses of Excel is to maintain a list of events, appointments or other calendar related stuff. While Excel shines easily when you want to log this data, it has no quick way to visualize this information. But we can use little creativity, conditional formatting, few formulas & 3 lines of VBA code to create a slick, interactive calendar in Excel. Today, lets understand how to do this.
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As you may know, I am running my first ever Advanced Excel & Dashboards Masterclass in USA this summer (May / June 2013). We will be doing 2 day interactive sessions on Excel, advanced Excel, interactive charts, pivot tables & dashboards in Chicago, New York, Washington (DC) & Columbus (OH). If you live near any of these cities and want to become awesome in Excel, please consider enrolling in my Masterclass.
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Back to the interactive calendar
Coming back to our topic at hand – interactive calendar, what do we mean by this?
Well, something like below:
How to create an interactive calendar from a set of events
1. Collect all the event data in a table
Just enter event data in a table like below:
2. Set up a calendar in a separate rate
If your events span several months, then you can use formulas to generate calendar.
In my case, all the events (Masterclass sessions) are in May & June 2013. So I just entered date of May 1st in a cell, dragged it sideways and then re-arranged the cells to make it look like a calendar. At this stage, the calendar should look like this:
3. Name the calendar range
This is simple. Select all the cells in calendar range and give a name to it. I called mine “calendar”.
4. Assign a cell for identifying which date is selected
Select a blank cell in your workbook, give it a name like “selectedCell”. We will use this to identify which date is selected by user.
5. Write Worksheet_selectionchange() event
This will help us identify when user selects a cell in “calendar” range. The below 3 line VBA should do. Please attach it to the sheet where your calendar is.
Private Sub Worksheet_SelectionChange(ByVal Target As Range)
If Not Application.Intersect(Target, Range("calendar")) Is Nothing Then
[selectedCell] = ActiveCell.Value
End If
End Sub
Tutorial: Showing details when user selects a cell
6. Set up the formulas to show details when a valid date is selected
Lets say, each event has 4 details associated with it – title, date, venue & description.
Now, we need to show details of the event when user selects a date in the calendar. Since the selected date is in “selectedCell”, we can use VLOOKUP, IF, IFERROR formulas to do this:
- Fetch event title in a cell if date selected has an event in it. Else keep it blank
-
=IFERROR(VLOOKUP(selectedCell, table_of_events, event_title_column, false),"")
-
- Fetch rest of event details, but keep them blank if date has no events.
Lets say these 4 details are fetched to cells D1, D2, D3 & D4 cells.
7. In calendar sheet, add 4 text boxes and assign them to cells
Finally, in calendar sheet, add 4 text boxes. Assign them to D1, D2, D3 & D4 cells. Arrange and format them as you fancy.
Tip: to assign a cell to text box, just select the text box, go to formula bar and type =D1 press enter.
8. Set up conditional formatting to highlight selected dates
Finally, add a simple conditional formatting rule to highlight the selected dates in calendar. This is simple. Assuming calendar starts at cell A1,
- Select the calendar range
- Go to conditional formatting
- Add new rule
- Select rule type as “Use a formula to determine which cells to highlight”
- type the rule as =A1=selectedCell
- Set up formatting
PS: in my data above, I have used different formula as we need to highlight 2 dates of a Masterclass even when 1 is selected.
Tip: Introduction to conditional formatting.
9. Clean up and formatting
Clean up your worksheets and format the calendar so that it looks gorgeous. And you are done!
Download Interactive Calendar Example file
Click here to download interactive calendar example file and play with it to understand this better.
Examine the formulas in “Calcs” sheet & VBA code so that you can see how this is weaved.
Work with calendar data often, then you are in luck
If you use calendar data often and are looking for some inspiration, ideas & examples on how to represent it, then check out below examples:
- Employee vacation tracker & dashboard
- Creating perpetual calendar & event tracker in Excel
- Interactive pivot table calendar & chart in Excel
- Creating an interactive picture calendar
- Employee shift calendar template
- Annual goals tracker
Do you like the interactive calendar?
I often use interactive calendars in my dashboards & client projects. Since calendars are very natural way to understand events, they work really well.
What about you? Do you use calendars often? How do you like the above technique? Please share your thoughts & ideas using comments.
PS: And if you are waiting to become awesome in Excel, then wait no more. Book your spot in my upcoming Masterclass. Click here.
21 Responses to “How to Filter Odd or Even Rows only? [Quick Tips]”
Infact, instead of using =ISEVEN(B3), how about to use =ISEVEN(ROW())
So it takes away any chance of wrong referencing.
I like Daily Dose of Excel
I like it.
Just a heads up, you do need to have the Analysis ToolPak add-in activated to use the ISEVEN / ISODD functions. An alternative to ISEVEN would be:
=MOD(ROW(),2)=0
rather than use a formula, couldn't you enter "true" in first cell and "false" in the second and drag it down and than filter on true or false.
Just for clarification, is Ashish looking to filter by even or odd Characters or rows?
so many functions to learn!
Nice support by chandoo and team as a helpdesk. Give us more to learn and make us awesome. Always be helpful.......
In case you want to delete instead of filter,
IF your data is in Sheet1 column A
Put this in Sheet2 column A and drag down
=OFFSET(Sheet1!A$1,(ROWS($1:1)-1)*2,,)
(This is to delete even rows)
To delete odd rows :
=OFFSET(Sheet1!A$2,(ROWS($1:1)-1)*2,,)
If your numbered cells did not correspond to rows, the answer would be even simpler:
=MOD([cell address],2), then filter by 0 to see evens or 1 to see odds.
I sometimes do this using an even simpler method. I add a new column called "Sign" and put the value of 1 in the first row, say cell C2 if C1 contains the header. Then in C3 I put the formula =-1 * C2, which I copy and paste into the rest of the rows (so C4 has =-1 * C3 and so forth). Now I can just apply a filter and pick either +1 or -1 to see half the rows.
Another way, which works if I want three possibilities: in C2 I put the value 1, in C3 I put the value 2, in C4 I put the value 3, then in C5 I put the formula =C2 then I copy C5 and paste into all the remaining rows (so C6 gets =C3, C7 gets =C4, etc.). Now I can apply a filter and pick the value 1, 2, or 3 to see a third of the rows.
Extending this approach to more than 3 cases is left as an exercise for the reader.
Another way =MOD(ROW();2). In this case, must to choose betwen 1 and 0.
[...] How to Filter Even or Odd rows only [...]
very different style Odd or Even Rows very easy way to visit this site
http://www.handycss.com/tips/odd-or-even-rows/
Thanks for the tip, it worked like magic, saved having to delete row by row in my database.
Thanks!
Thankssssssssssssssss
Hi Chandoo- First of all thanks for the trick. It helped me a lot. Here I have one more challenge. Having filtered the data based on odd. I want to paste data in another sheet adjacent to it. How can I do that?
For Example-
A 1 odd
B 3 odd
C 4 even
D 6 even
I have fileted the above data for odd and want to copy the "This is odd number" text in adjacent/next sheet here. How can I do that. After doing this my data should look like this
A 1 odd This is odd number
B 3 odd This is odd number
C 4 even
D 6 even
Hi! Could you please help me find a formula to filter by language?
Thank you!
Chandoo SIR,
I HAVE A DATA IN EXCEL ROWS LIKE BELOW IS THERE ANY FORMULA OR A WAY WHERE I CAN INSTRUCT I CAN MAKE CHANGES , MEANS I WANT TO WRITE ONLY , THE FIG IS FRESH, BUT IN BELOW ROW IT WILL AUTOMATICALLY TAKE THE SOME WORDS FROM FIGS AND MAKE IN PLURAL FORM , WHILE USING '' ARE'' LIKE BELOW
The fig is fresh - row 1
Figs are fresh - row 2
The Pomegranate is red - row 3
Pomegranates are red - row 4
=IF(EVEN(A1)=A1,"EVEN - do something","ODD - do something else") with iferron (for blank Cell)