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.
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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.
30 Responses to “Rescue oddly shaped data – Battle between Formulas, VBA and Power Query”
Nice use of Power Query! Power Query is simply awesome! But somehow a lot of people are punishing themselves by not using it (not learning it).
An imperfect 4th approach for consideration... no codes at all...
Select myrange.
Go to Special --> Blank
Delete Cell --> Shift cell left
90% done... now we just need to move the data of 2nd column to the bottom of 1st column
Of course... Power Query is the best.
Cheers,
There is another way but it involves multiple steps:
Copy the values in column E, move the cursor to F5, Paste Special with Skip Blanks, OK
Copy the values in column D, move the cursor to F8, Paste Special with Skip Blanks, OK
And so on.
This works perfectly, albeit a little clumsily apart from the values in B17 and C16, which can be moved with simple copy and paste
Power Query Forever! I do not know how I survived for so long without knowing and using this tool, I can not recommend it to my colleagues, but by the way they prefer to suffer to learn.
My congratulations here from Brazil.
I rolled my eyes when I saw that data
Using decimal places is a nice trick to order data, thanks for that
And tweaking the first formula a bit, you can use OFFSET instead of INDIRECT
=OFFSET($A$1, MIN(IF(myrange, ROW(myrange)), ROWS(A$1:A1))-1, RIGHT(TEXT(MIN(IF(myrange, ROW(myrange) + COLUMN(myrange)*0.00001), ROWS(A$1:A1)), ".00000"), 5)-1)
Tried the above formula with the downloaded oddly shaped data file and I could not get it to work. I get #value without ctrl+shift+enter, and #ref with ctrl+shift+enter.
Sorry, it was SMALL, not MIN.
Add with CTRL+SHIFT+ENTER.
Thank you for your formula. Like the indirect formula I tested this one in older versions of EXCEL and it worked without ALTERATION in EXCEL 95. Very impressive.
Too complicated
Use =Sum to summarize all the sells to the left and Bobs Your Uncle
@Bertie... I am afraid that won't work when you have more than one value in a row.
I tested this formula in versions of Excel all the way back to Excel 95
=IF(ISERROR(INDIRECT("R"&SUBSTITUTE(TEXT(SMALL(IF(MyRange"",ROW(MyRange)+COLUMN(MyRange)*0.00001),ROWS(A$1:A9)),"00000.00000"),".","C"),FALSE)),"",(INDIRECT("R"&SUBSTITUTE(TEXT(SMALL(IF(MyRange"",ROW(MyRange)+COLUMN(MyRange)*0.00001),ROWS(A$1:A9)),"00000.00000"),".","C"),FALSE)))
So there are multiple ways of cleaning up messy data by formulas.
Wow.. Excel 95. Who knew people still use that. But as you have shown, Excel has all these beautiful and powerful functions for 23 years. It has data sciency stuff before DS was even a thing.
I had a problem with pasting the formula in the original post.
Formula should be: =IF(ISERROR(INDIRECT("R"&SUBSTITUTE(TEXT(SMALL(IF(myrange"",ROW(myrange)+COLUMN(myrange)*0.00001),ROWS(A$1:A1)),"00000.00000"),".","C"),FALSE)),"",(INDIRECT("R"&SUBSTITUTE(TEXT(SMALL(IF(myrange"",ROW(myrange)+COLUMN(myrange)*0.00001),ROWS(A$1:A1)),"00000.00000"),".","C"),FALSE)))
EXCEL even in a 16 bit version, is a very robust and capable program.
I don't like the VBA code. If you have a blank row in MyRange, the last entry in the range is doubled up in the paste.here range.
Not really. The macro is writing one cell at a time from paste.here. You have to clean the range before, which I was too lazy to write. But a line like Range(range("paste.here"), range("paste.here").end(xldown)).clearcontents should do the trick.
Adding Range(range("paste.here"), range("paste.here").end(xldown)).clearcontents fixed the problem.
for step split column by delimiter i am not getting option of split into rows or columns. Can you help me in this
Thanks Chandoo for promoting Power Query.
To simplify further, you can "Unpivot Columns" instead of right click on the newly created column and split it by comma in to rows in step 3 of Power Query.
i used
=LOOKUP(10000,B5:F5)
and got the answers. I just plagiarized this formula somewhere and use it, maybe you can explain why it works.
Regards
@Johan... I am not sure if the formula works correctly. When I tested it with the sample data in this post, it showed #N/As in two cells. Essentially, it will only give first value in each row. So if a row has multiple values, then subsequent values are missed. LOOKUP() function goes thru a list and finds the first value that is less than or equal to the input - in this case 10000 in B5:F5.
I have the need to convert pdf's to excel on occasion and they often come out a mess like this. I have used:
Cell G2 =COUNT(myrange)
Cell G3 =IFERROR(IF(G2-1<1,"",G2-1),"") copied down to G100
Cell H2 =IFERROR(LARGE(myrange,G2),"") copied down to H100
Waouw...
=IFERROR(INDIRECT("R" & SUBSTITUTE(TEXT(SMALL(IF(myrange "", ROW(myrange) + COLUMN(myrange)*0.00001),
ROWS(A$1:A1)), "00000.00000"), ".", "C"), FALSE), "")
but CTRL Shift Enter with {} before and after 🙂 😀
Here's a way with pivot table
https://www.bookkempt.com/2018/02/aligning-non-contiguous-data.html
This is brilliant. Bookmarked 🙂
Another possibility.
This assumes that you have a row index 'k' to use in the SMALL function and a column index 'h' to identify the columns of 'myRange'.
If you define 'coord' to refer to
=k+h/10 [assuming h<10]
then it will be possible to recover values later based upon location within 'myRange'. The formula 'nb' that identifies non-blanks by coordinates is given by
= SMALL( IF(myRange"", coord), k )
Finally, to unpick the pieces
= INDEX( myRange, INT(nb), 10*MOD(nb, 1) )
Whilst I am here and making trouble the PQ solution is also a tad over-complicated. All that is needed is to unpivot the entire table and remove the Attribute column.
The advanced editor would show
let
Source = Excel.CurrentWorkbook(){[Name="myRange"]}[Content],
#"Unpivoted Columns" = Table.UnpivotOtherColumns(Source, {}, "Attribute", "Value"),
#"Removed Columns" = Table.RemoveColumns(#"Unpivoted Columns",{"Attribute"})
in
#"Removed Columns"
1.fill the blank cells with 0
2.the requested column value=sum of those mess number column
but this can be used in only one column has value
Chandoo
And if we use the formula SEARCH (100000000, B5: F5)
JC
Another approach with Power Query, it will still work if the number of columns changed:
let
Source = Excel.CurrentWorkbook(){[Name="myrange"]}[Content],
#"Added Custom" = Table.AddColumn(Source, "List", each Record.ToList(_)),
#"Removed Other Columns" = Table.SelectColumns(#"Added Custom",{"List"}),
#"Expanded LIst" = Table.ExpandListColumn(#"Removed Other Columns", "List"),
#"Filtered Rows" = Table.SelectRows(#"Expanded LIst", each ([List] null))
in
#"Filtered Rows"
Cool idea to use Record.ToList as added column. Thanks for sharing this.
Nowadays, you can just use TOCOL on Excel 2024, MS 365, and Web Excel. It has a parameter to ignore blanks/errors/both.