Using Arrays To Update Table Columns

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Using Arrays To Update Table Columns

We are creating a lot of reports everyday and these reports contain a lot of data which is presented in various styles as per the requirements. The data that allows us to create the reports is usually referred as raw data and in most of the cases is stored in hidden sheets.

I am sure you all are aware of a feature called as Excel Tables OR Structured References in Excel. Excel Tables is (in my opinion) the best way to store your raw data and put Formulas in the columns where necessary, this way you eliminate the need of a Cell Based Reference formula (example =SUM(B4:B50) and replace them with =sum(YourTable[YourTableColumnName]).

Another good feature of the Excel Tables is you just need to put the formula in 1 cell and it is replicated for that column by Excel.

Sometimes these formulas take a lot of time to calculate when we have really huge data points. In this scenarios it is better to have hard-coded values instead of the formulas to gain on speed.
In this post we will learn about how we can make use of Array’s to quickly populate the excel columns with the desired results before publishing our reports and other documents.

Here is a demo of what I mean:

using-array-to-update-table-columns

Below is the code that allows us to add a new column to our data table and then taking input from the Date Time column provides us with the Week Of column.

Sub UpdateWeek()
Dim myarray As Variant
Dim theRange As Range, startCellRow As Long
Dim tempStr As String
Dim myNewCol As ListColumn

‘If our column already exists then delete it
On Error Resume Next
Worksheets(“Data”).ListObjects(“cs”).ListColumns(“WeekOf”).Delete

‘adding our new column
Set myNewCol = Worksheets(“Data”).ListObjects(“cs”).ListColumns.Add
myNewCol.Name = “WeekOf”

‘Selecting the first cell of the column that contains our dates
Worksheets(“Data”).ListObjects(“cs”).ListColumns(“Date Time”).Range.Cells(2).Select

‘building a temporary Range address, this will be used to upload the entire range into the array

tempStr = ActiveCell.Address
startCellRow = ActiveCell.Row
tempStr = tempStr & “:$” & Mid(Sheets(“Data”).ListObjects(“cs”).ListColumns(“Date Time”).Range.Cells(2).Address, 2, 1) & “$”

tempStr = tempStr & LastRowInOneColumn(Mid(Sheets(“Data”).ListObjects(“cs”).ListColumns(“Date Time”).Range.Cells(2).Address, 2, 1))
‘loading the range into the array

myarray = Range(tempStr).Value

‘Looping through the array and converting each element to the relevant Week format
For i = LBound(myarray) To UBound(myarray)
myarray(i, 1) = Format(myarray(i, 1) – Weekday(myarray(i, 1), vbMonday) + 1, “ddd dd-mmm”)
Next

‘Setting the range address for our output column

Set theRange = Range(Cells(startCellRow, Worksheets(“Data”).ListObjects(“cs”).ListColumns(“WeekOf”).Range.Column), Cells(UBound(myarray) + (startCellRow – 1), Worksheets(“Data”).ListObjects(“cs”).ListColumns(“WeekOf”).Range.Column))
‘storing the values from our array to the WeekOf Column

theRange.Value = myarray
End Sub

Let’s Understand the code

We first delete the column if it is already existing to make sure we always get the new values as output. This is done by the below line of code.

Worksheets("Data").ListObjects("cs").ListColumns("WeekOf").Delete

Once we have deleted the column, we add it again as a blank column and change the name to “Week Of”.

Set myNewCol = Worksheets("Data").ListObjects("cs").ListColumns.Add
myNewCol.Name = "WeekOf"

After this we need to select the first cell of the column that contains the Date Time.

Worksheets("Data").ListObjects("cs").ListColumns("Date Time").Range.Cells(2).Select

Once we have selected the first cell of you Date Time column we then make use of the LastRowInOneColumn function to get the last row and create a range address. We use this range address to assign all the values contained in the Date Time column to an array.

tempStr = ActiveCell.Address
startCellRow = ActiveCell.Row
tempStr = tempStr & ":$" & Mid(Sheets("Data").ListObjects("cs").ListColumns("Date Time").Range.Cells(2).Address, 2, 1) & "$"

tempStr = tempStr & LastRowInOneColumn(Mid(Sheets(“Data”).ListObjects(“cs”).ListColumns(“Date Time”).Range.Cells(2).Address, 2, 1))
‘loading the range into the array
myarray = Range(tempStr).Value

Once we have loaded all the Date Time values into an array, we do a simple For loop to change the value in the array to the relevant Week Of

For i = LBound(myarray) To UBound(myarray)
myarray(i, 1) = Format(myarray(i, 1) - Weekday(myarray(i, 1), vbMonday) + 1, "ddd dd-mmm")
Next

We perform this operation on the same element and store the modified value in itself.
Once we have all these done, we need to define the Output range, that is where we need to the Week Of values to be stored. This is done by using the Range and Cell functions.

Set theRange = Range(Cells(startCellRow, Worksheets("Data").ListObjects("cs").ListColumns("WeekOf").Range.Column), Cells(UBound(myarray) + (startCellRow - 1), Worksheets("Data").ListObjects("cs").ListColumns("WeekOf").Range.Column))
'storing the values from our array to the WeekOf Column

theRange.Value = myarray

And lastly we assign all the values stored in the array to the new range address we have create above.

Download Demo File

Click here to download the demo file & use it to understand this technique.

What about you? Do you use them often? Please share your experiences, techniques & ideas using comments.

If you are new to VBA, Excel macros, go thru these links to learn more.

Join our VBA Classes

If you want to learn how to develop applications like these and more, please consider joining our VBA Classes. It is a step-by-step program designed to teach you all concepts of VBA so that you can automate & simplify your work.

Click here to learn more about VBA Classes & join us.

About Vijay

Vijay (many of you know him from VBA Classes), joined chandoo.org full-time this February. He will be writing more often on using VBA, data analysis on our blog. Also, Vijay will be helping us with consulting & training programs. You can email Vijay at sharma.vijay1 @ gmail.com. If you like this post, say thanks to Vijay.

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29 Responses to “Customer Service Dashboard using Excel [Dashword Week]”

  1. Tom Quist says:

    Looks good, Mara. Keep up the good work!

  2. William Solera says:

    Thx Mara, your work is great, congratulations...

  3. Francis Chin says:

    wow ! Great stuff Mara !!
    I am amazed on the work you did !

    What I like about your dashboard
    1. The first impression is the colors used. Very smart use of colors that matches each other, easy on the eye - make people wants to find out more !

    2. Clear message shown for the tweetboard for Quick overview on the state of situation.

    3. Use of creative titles for your charts "Information Desk".

    4. Clear and uncluttered charts. Gives reader a clear perspective with good use of charts colors too.

    5. Good use of Legend to describe what color meant "Highest Sales out of the three months"

    6. Of course, good use of Check boxes and Slider bar to offer interactiveness on your charts.

    Suggestions
    1. You may want to consider formatting your Y and X axis labels to show thousands, in $500K format instead of $500,000, so you can even made your chart look much neater.

    2. Budget Variant Chart - This one is special...I took a second look and try to understand it. I am not sure if this is the best chart to visualize Sales VS Budget and Variances. And the Variance of 16.19% is positive, so u may want to use conditional formatting to make it green color, red if negative.

    Overall is Great Work and Great Effort !!! Keep it up and I am so proud of you !

    Francis Chin
    http://www.francischin.com

  4. Sabrina says:

    Great Work Maya, just wondering if "5" Scrollable list of various gift shop items, can compare the previous 2 and current month selected in the above picklist, just one more suggestion if we can use top 5 gift category by using donut and bar mix chart to show sales mix for different months

  5. Sabrina says:

    Chandoo I would like to thank you for posting such helpful tricks for creating dashboards, I have learned a lot from your KPI Dashboard demo, I have created one dashboard to compare performce of Sales Associates, thaks a lot again

  6. Fred says:

    Thanks for the idea! Great job! You are giving me a lot of inspiratons!

  7. Mara says:

    Thanks everyone for the nice comments. I'm such a novice at this so I was so grateful for Chandoo's class and for everyone who submits ideas on his blog.

    Francis: Thanks so much for your comments. You're an inspiration. For the budget variance chart, I actually got that idea from one of Chandoo's post on budget vs actual. There was one that was simple and easy to read so I learned how to do that and made it dynamic. I'm open to any other ideas you have for budget vs actual. I'm always looking for ways to improve.

    Sabrina: Thank you for you for your suggestion on the top 5.

  8. Bhushan Sabbani says:

    Dear Mara,

    Great work.

    But i one suggestion regarding the INFORMATION DESK graph is consist of month but which year it belong is not there if it would be there it would be great.

    Warm Regards
    Bhushan Sabbani
    +91 98208 26012

  9. Avni says:

    Thanks for this idea... Great Stuff !!

  10. Ravi Kiran says:

    Excellent dashboard Mara.
    The best I like about the dashboard is the choice of colors. They are cool and not distracting. Thanks for sharing the file.

    @Chandoo
    Thanks for the dashboard week Chandoo. I am learnt a lot in the last 2 days. I am excited over the next 3 days! 🙂

    Regards,
    Ravi.

  11. VIO67 says:

    Great work Mara ! Thanks for sharing .

  12. goa homestay says:

    Mara, I liked the line, "Need to be more helpful." Our government needs to print this line, laminate it and post it in all government offices for the staff to see.

  13. Darshan says:

    Hi there, i have been recently visiting this blog it is really great, the best one for Excel, wish Chandoo great success ahead.

    I have one query, if you protect the data sheet the chart with the checkbox gives and error saying the data is protected and cannot be modified, is there a way around. This is cause if we want to publish this to someone who should only see it and do no changes to the data, is it possible please guide.

    This could be a silly but bear me i am novice to excel 🙂

    Thanks.

  14. praveen says:

    nice work.

  15. praveen says:

    inspired me a lot, working on few dashboard projects...

  16. Jay says:

    dear mara
    looks great .any reason why you have not used the bullet chart for the actual vs target chart.on the whole it is simple and elegant .jay.

  17. Gautam says:

    Dear Chandoo,

    The word Dashboard in the heading is misspelt.

  18. Krrish says:

    Wow. Very Nice work Mara. Next week I am going to take the Course, I will try to post my work here.

    Thank you so much for your helpful blog. Always appreciated your tips and tricks.

    I am proud that you belongs to our Vizag City.

  19. Krrish says:

    The above comment, I forgot mentioned about Chandoo, those two paras is about Chandoo. 😀

  20. Azucena says:

    Thank you Mara!

  21. vishal says:

    Thx Mara, your work is great, congratulations…

  22. Nalini says:

    Great Work Mara!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  23. Aayush says:

    Hi Chandoo,
     
    I had been following your blogs for tips and tricks on excel. I am working with Media agency and we collect the data. Now this data has several parameters based on several legends. For eg Class A - legend color red, classB - legend color green and so on. Class A has several characteristics and parameters and heading etc. Now everytime we gather data and make pivot then based on the data in the pilot tables - top 10 we need to insert those in charts manually and also need to change the colors of legends and also. We create nearly 300 slides every month sector wise and it takes nearly our 4-5 days in doing that. Do you have any sample dashboard which will be helpfull to us and we can create it in a day.

  24. Gowravan says:

    Thanks really amazing one,

    it helped me in desgining OTACE report

    Regards
    Gowravan M
    9980651792

  25. mukhtar says:

    Awesome Job done here .............

  26. Samuel Amankwah says:

    very good master piece but wont to know if you can design KPI's for a financial institution. Thank you

  27. tajdeed pharma says:

    I need help to make performance for our company

    we have about 10 products from 5 years old

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