Imagine you have a worksheet with lots of charts. And you want to make it look awesome & clean.
Solution?
Simple, create an interactive chart so that your users can pick one of many charts and see them.
Today let us understand how to create an interactive chart using Excel.
PS: This is a revised version of almost 5 year old article – Select & show one chart from many.
A demo of our interactive Excel chart
First, take a look at the chart that you will be creating.
Feeling excited? read on to learn how to create this.
Solution – Creating Interactive chart in Excel
- First create all the charts you want and place them in separate locations in your worksheet. Lets say your charts look like this.
- Now, select all the cells corresponding to first chart, press ALT MMD (Formula ribbon > Define name). Give a name like
Chart1.
- Repeat this process for all charts you have, naming them like
Chart2,Chart3… - In a separate range of cells, list down all chart names. Give this range a name like
lstChartTypes. - Add a new sheet to your workbook. Call it “Output”.
- In the output sheet, insert a combo-box form control (from Developer Ribbon > Insert > Form Controls)
- Select the combo box control and press Ctrl+1 (format control).
- Specify input range as
lstChartTypesand cell link as a blank cell in your output sheet (or data sheet).
[Related: Detailed tutorial on Excel Combo box & other form controls]
- Now, when you make a selection in the combo box, you will know which option is selected in the linked cell.
- Now, we need a mechanism to pull corresponding chart based on user selection. Enter a named range –
selChart. - Press ALT MMD or go to Formula ribbon > Define name. Give the name as
selChartand define it as
=CHOOSE(linked_cell, Chart1, Chart2, Chart3, Chart4)
PS: CHOOSE formula will select one of the Chart ranges based on user’s selection (help). - Now, go back to data & charts sheet. Select Chart1 range. Press CTRL+C to copy it.
- Go to Output sheet and paste it as linked picture (Right click > Paste Special > Linked Picture)
- This will insert a linked picture of Chart 1.
[Related: What is a picture link and how to use it?] - Now, click on the picture, go to formula bar, type =selChart and press enter
- Move the image around, position it nicely next to the combo box.
- Congratulations! Your interactive chart is ready 🙂
Video tutorial explaining this chart
Watch below tutorial to understand how to make this chart.
(or watch it on our Youtube channel)
Download Interactive Chart Excel file
Click here to download interactive chart Excel file and play with it. Observe the named ranges (selChart) and set up charts to learn more.
More Examples of Dynamic & Interactive Charts
If you want to learn more about these techniques, go thru below examples.
- Interactive sales analysis chart using Excel
- Use analytical charts to make your boss fall in love with you
- Making a dynamic chart with checkboxes
- How to make your charts & dashboards interactive – Detailed how to guide
- Lots of examples, tips & downloads on interactive & dynamic charts in Excel
Do you use interactive charts?
Dynamic & interactive charts are one of my favorite Excel tricks. I use them in almost all of my dashboards, Excel models and my clients are always wowed by them.
What about you? Do you use interactive charts often? What are your favorite techniques for creating them? Please share your tips & ideas using comments.
Want to learn more? Consider joining my upcoming Dashboards & Advanced Excel Masterclass
I’m very excited to announce my upcoming Advanced Dashboards in Excel Masterclass in USA.
Chandoo.org & PowerPivotPro.com will be hosting this two day, intensive hands-on Masterclass. Enhance your Excel skills to create interactive, dynamic and polished looking dashboards your boss will love. Don’t miss out, this is a one-time opportunity to attend my live workshop in Chicago, New York, Washington DC & Columbus OH in May and June 2013. Places are strictly limited.
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Above article is a preview of the tips and tricks you will be learning in the Masterclass.
17 Responses to “Budget vs. Actual Profit Loss Report using Pivot Tables”
Good Work, Yogesh & Chandoo! Thanks.
Hi everybody,
first sorry I am late to say something about this topic;actually I was waiting last part
second I am not accountant I am an Engineer
third """"Very Important""" the idea is not about Loss but I am sure it is profit
Based on third it shows:
1- How to use EXCEL
2- How to use pivot TABLES
3- How to collect and arrange DATA
4- How to make reports
Many Thanks
Hi Yogesh and Chandoo,
Thank you for sharing your knowledge!
You guys are great!
thanks chandoo and yogesh, thanks for you lessons, are great!....i have a idea for a budget. I try to do it..... thanks for all
Thanks a lot for sharing the most powerful tool worldwide "knowledge"
Warm greetings from Peru
Hi -
This is a really great article because it's a simple and common thing you'd want to do with a pivot table but not at all obvious how to do it! So - muchas gracias to Chandoo and Yogesh!
One thing - I couldn't get past the group error in the sample file. I would click on ungroup but it didn't seem to have any effect. I'd appreciate it if anybody has any pointers here.
-Juanito
Hi Chandoo
I am also having the group error. Can't seem to ungroup? Appreciate if you explain further on the steps required in order to get to calculated items.
Many thanks and keep up the great work.
Cheers
Adam
Hi Chandoo,
I'm struggling resolving the problem depicted below:
I have a set of data, with (among others) a "Region" field (can be APJ, EMEA, or AMS), and a "Country" field.
Unfortunately, I need to group data by the following 4 Regions: APeJ, Japan, EMEA and AMS.
I first tried to make a pivot with Region and Country in the rows (or columns), and then group Country data as per the above.
Alas, as soon as I have a new Country that appear in my data set, my groupings are broken, and I have to redo the job of ungrouping, grouping etc.
I thought I could try to use calculated item, by adding first a new column to my dataset concatenating Region_Country, and create an "APeJ" calculated item that would sum all the "APJ_*" and substract the "APJ_Japan", but again, no clue, as I can't find a way to use any wild card in those formulas.
Given that I already found extremely helpful tips and tricks in your site that helped me manage that bunch of data, I'm pretty sure you'll have a bright idea on how I can solve that one!
Thanks in advance for your lights!
Hi Catherine...
In such cases, I advice using an additional column in the data itself. You can set-up a grouping table else where with country in first column, region in second column. And then in the data, you can add an extra column and use VLOOKUP to fetch the region based on the country.
Then feed this entire data (with extra column) to pivot table and use the extra column to group the data.
Hi Chandoo,
Thank you for your prompt answer.
I finally came to the same conclusion - after a rest 🙂 . I was probably too tired Friday evening (it was rather late), having spent hours in manipulating all my surveys data so as to pull rolling averages, make nice graphs and so on, and was trying to find a complex solution when there was a simple one.
Thanks again,
Catherine
Hey,
Great post!
I for example have different database structure with the following fields :
Date, Expense, Income, Sum (Income - Expense), Category (Sales, Cost of Goods and etc).
Creating a P&L report for the whole year works great. Including gross margin % and etc.
Though, creating P&L report by QTR/Month is becoming impossible since i get the following error : “This PivotTable report field is grouped. You cannot add calculated item to grouped filed.”
Is there a solution for this kind of problem?
Like Adam and Juanito, I also cannot ungroup.
Would appreciate it if you can add a few more lines and a screenshot or two on where to put the mouse cursor to ungroup.
Hi, I have figured out the ungrouping problem. One of the earlier steps was to group by month, if you pull the month back down to the column then right click and then select ungroup, then pull the month back up so you end up with just data source and budget/actual as the headings, then you can continue on.
To solve the ungroup problem, my method is:
Copy the "data" sheet to a whole new Excel workbook
and directly work on Part 6.
And since it is a fresh copy, Excel don't show me the "can't ungroup" problem. Hope this help.
Thank you Yogesh for this wonderful tutorial.
Kent, Malaysia
Just when i thought pivots were awesome i learn about inserting the calculated fields and that makes them more awesome. chandoo where have you been all my life.
Hello - your P&L pivot version has really impressed my boss and would like to use it. I have applied it for a actual vs budget vs forecast model I have created. One problem. In your variance above the operating profit percent % variance shows 33.8% but I want it to show (0.01) point or the true diff from prior budget.
I know I can add calculation to the side but boss would like to see it in pivot table.
Please help
Thanks
I have a further query which may solve my above dilemma. Is it possible to add a column that calculates percent increase. So in the example above a new column would be added to show variance %.
Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks