Bar & Column charts are very useful for comparison. Here is a little trick that can enhance them even more.
Lets say you are looking at sales of various products in a column chart. And you want to know how sales of a given product compare with a lower bound (last year sales) and an upper bound (competition benchmark). By adding these boundary markers, your chart instantly becomes even more meaningful.
How to create a chart with lower & upper bounds?
1. Select data and make a column chart
Lets say your data looks like this. Select it all and insert a column chart from insert ribbon.
2. Convert lower & upper columns to lines
In Excel 2013:
- Right click on either lower or upper bound columns.
- Choose “Change series chart type…”
- Select “line chart with markers” as the chart type for both lower & upper series
- Done!
In earlier versions:
- Right click on lower series
- Choose “Change series chart type…”
- Select “line chart with markers”
- Repeat the process for upper series
- Done
- Related: How to create combination charts in Excel?
After this step, your chart looks like this:
3. Set line color to “no line” and format markers
This is easy. Just set the line color to “no line” and format the markers so that they are prominent.
Your column chart with lower & upper bounds is ready.
Bonus step: Custom shapes for lower & upper bounds
If you want something fancy, you can use custom shapes for lower & upper bounds, as shown below.
To get this:
- Draw custom shapes using drawing tools in Insert ribbon.
- Make sure they are really small (else the markers will be shown at wrong places)
- Copy the shape (CTRL+C)
- Select marker series for which you want this shape.
- Paste (CTRL+V)
- Done!!!
Video tutorial of Column chart with lower & upper bounds
Here is a video tutorial of column chart with lower & upper bounds.
This video is also part of my Excel School program. If you like the video, you are going to love our Excel School program, where more than 50 such videos will help you become awesome in Excel.
Click here to know more about Excel School & join us.
Download the chart workbook
Click here to download the workbook. It contains column chart with lower & upper bounds example, detailed instructions and custom shape example.
When do you use lower, upper bounds in your charts?
I use this technique all the time. I apply markers for extra data like average, KPI targets, last year values etc. Here is one more example.
What about you? Do you use lower, upper bounds in your charts? In which scenarios you apply them? Please share your experiences using comments.
For more charting tips…
Make sure you check out our charting page. It has 100s of Excel tutorials, templates & design examples on charts.
If you still want more, consider joining Excel School. You will be a charting pro soon.
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)