Lets talk about people who inspire us. People who show us that anything is possible. People who prove that commitment, hard work and perseverance are true ingredients of a genius.
I am talking about Sachin Tendulkar. Those of you who never heard his name, he is the most prolific cricketer in the world. He is the leading scorer in both tests (15,921 runs) and one day matches (18,426 runs). Read more about him here.
Tendulkar has been an inspiration for me (and millions of others around the world) since I was a kid. The amount of dedication & excellence he has shown constantly motivates me. It is a pity that the great man is retiring from test cricket. He is playing his last test match (200th, most by any person) as I am writing this.
So as a small tribute, I have decided do something for him. Of course, I have never been a cricketer in my life. Once in college I was reluctantly asked to be a stand-by player in a game with seniors. I did not get a chance to pad up though. That is the closest I have been to a cricketer. So I did what I do best. I made an Excel dashboard celebrating Sachin’s test career.
Thank you Sachin – his test career in a dashboard
Here is a dashboard I made visualizing his test cricket statistics. It is dynamic, fun & awesome (just like Sachin).
(click on the image to enlarge)
Download the workbook
Click here to download the file and play with it.
How is this made?
Data:
The data for this dashboard is downloaded from espncricinfo.com and the trivia details are downloaded from in.msn.com
Data from Cricinfo website came in multiple tables. So it took a fair bit of massaging to get everything flow in to dashboard.
Formulas used:
This dashboard uses generous amounts of SUMIFS, COUNTIFS, INDEX, MATCH and VLOOKUP with an occasional LARGE.
For some of the calculations, I have also used Pivot tables.
PS: All the calculations & pivot tables are hidden. Unhide them to go Indian Jones on the dashboard.
Output:
The output dashboard is generated by using various ideas.
- Thermo-meter chart for % charts in the report
- Conditional formatting to show run heat map & India vs. Abroad bars.
- Area charts to show cumulative runs over the years.
- Form controls to capture user choices.
- Sortable country list using pre-sorted pivot tables.
- Picture links to show country flags.
- Text areas & shapes to make the layout of the dashboard.
I have used similar concepts in earlier dashboards. So I am not explaining everything in detail. Instead, let me point you to few detailed tutorials so you get the idea.
Thank you Sachin
Thanks for inspiring me Sachin. For 24 years, if there is a cricket match on TV, I would invariably ask, “Is Sachin playing?”. It would be hard to watch the sport knowing that you will not grace it with your presence. But you have given me and lots of people in my generation something even more valuable. You motivated us to excel in our life. For that I thank you.
Dig sports & Excel? Then you will love these dashboards
If you dig sports & work with Excel, then you are going to immensely enjoy below dashboards too.
- Roger Federer’s Wimbledon win – visualized in a dashboard
- India’s world cup victory in a dashboard
- Sachin Tendulkar info-graphic in Excel
- Official soccer balls in all worldcups in a chart!
8 Responses to “Top 5 keyboard shortcuts for Excel Charts”
As far as I remember (checked, again, 2 minutes ago) in my "Excel 2013" in order to select various chart elements I need to use the Arrow keys and not the TAB key.
Practically, the TAB key does nothing (within a Chart).
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Michael (Micky) Avidan
Thanks for pointing this out. This is how I remember it too, but when I was recording the video yesterday, only TAB key worked. MS must have changed the keys in Excel 2016. I have edited the post to include both keys.
The key navigation on charts is different in 2016.
TAB cycles through a layer of objects (SHIFT+TAB cycles backwards)
ENTER move down a layer
ESC moves up a layer
So on a column chart with title/legend/data labels if you select the plotarea the TAB will go through Title > Legend > Plotarea.
ENTER at plotarea will then select Vertical axis. Tab will take you through
Horizontal axis > gridlines > Series > Horizontal Axis.
ENTER with series selected will then allow you to TAB through individual data points and data labels.
If you ENTER on datalabels you can TAB through each data label.
ALT + F1 : to create default chart
ALT+E S T = CTRL + ALT + V, T : I find that easier to remember
I second what Michael already said about TAB and arrow keys. I can't help but think if this is related to the "," or ";" as separator. I prefer to use the chart tools - layout- drop down box, anyway.
Got to be F11 for instant charting. Highlight your data , hit F11 and voila! ?
Ctrl+1 is the most important chart shortcut. In fact, it works for any Excel object: whatever is selected, Ctrl+1 opens the task pane or dialog to format that object.
Somewhere along the line, maybe when Excel 2016 came out, the arrow keys stopped working to cycle through the elements of a chart. But what works is holding Ctrl while clicking the arrow keys. I haven't gotten used to the Tab and other keys, but as long as Ctrl+Arrow works, I'm good.
And F4 used to be so helpful when formatting a lot of charts. But since Excel 2007 came out, it has been mostly useless. It used to remember a whole set of changes at once, so I get that the newer modeless dialogs make that impractical. But now it only seems to work with formatting of lines and borders, and maybe fills. I find myself writing a lot of VBA one-liners in the Immediate Window to handle these tedious formatting tasks.
after clicking on a chart, is there a shortcut key to copy it?
Thank you for the Alt E S T - tip. This is more than a time saver. Because of dynamic charts or de-activated external references to data when you make the charts, you often have empty charts that are otherwise impossible to format. So this shortcut helps adressing that. I will work with it more and see if there remain some obstacles.