Few days ago, we learned how to create a pie+donut combination chart to visualize polls around the world in 2014. It generated quite a bit of interesting discussion (47 comments so far). One of the comments was from Roberto, who along with Kris & Gábor runs The FrankensTeam an online library of advanced Excel tricks, charts and other mind-boggling spreadsheet wizardry.
I really liked Roberto’s comments on the original post and a charting solution he presented. So I asked him if he can do a guest post explaining the technique to our audience. He obliged and here we go.
Over to FrankensTeam.
Combine pie and xy scatter charts – guest post by The FrankensTeam
Fraü Blucher: I am Fraü Blucher. [horses whinny]
Igor: Steady.
Freddy: Uh, how do you do? I am Dr. Fronkensteen. This is my assistant. Inga, may I present Fraü Blucher. [horses whinny] I wonder what’s got into them.
First of all, we would like to say thank you to Chandoo for asking us to explain how to make this kind of chart.
Recently we have seen an interesting pie-based plot chart by Chandoo. Our proposed version combines 3 different chart types based on some background calculations. The final model is dynamic, you can add more data, and you have the choice to use 1D or 2D data table. All the calculations are prepared on the sheets up to 10 categories. In this guest post we would like to share our template file and show you some of our charting technique.
As an extra, at the end of the post you can find a link to our VBA code which could be used to rotate the chart labels.
Building blocks of the vote-chart
We combined 3 chart types:
- donut chart (two series)
- Outer grey slices
- Inner grey slices with month names
- pie chart (one series)
- Invisible data for placing country labels
- xy scatter chart (three series)
- Brown dots – Legislative
- Blue dots – President
- Orange dots – Referendum
Doughnut series
The two series: month_label and month serve to create the gray ring for the months.
The labels in a doughnut chart are always positioned at the center. By using two series (so two rings) and eliminating the border lines, the two rings seem to be one, but the labels can be positioned at the bottom by adding it to the innermost ring. The reason why we use two rings instead of moving the labels manually is very simple: this way the labels will always stay at the same position, even if you resize the chart. Also it is easier than manually adjust the label boxes.
The month names are linked to the labels from cells (you can see it on the formula bar if you click on one label) because only one axis label could be assigned to the chart, and we use it for the country names (those are more… :-))
XY scatter series
Scatter series are used to arrange the colored dots on the outer ring. This is a main difference from Chandoo’s version. We use 3 series to separate the three different vote categories: presidential, legislative and referendum, and to position the dots of the same country in radial direction as you can see on the original chart. The 3 series form 3 big circles with different radius: legislative is the outermost, referendum is the innermost, but we move the points from the inner circles to the outer, if there is no “higher” vote-type.
Naturally it is possible to adjust the size and shape of the indicators.
We will show you later how to calculate the scatter point positions. (Maybe at first sight it seems to be difficult but you will see it is easy to arrange them properly.)
Our file is prepared to handle more vote-types (or other categories). You will only need to add the new series to the chart!
Pie series
Pie chart is used to position and show labels with the names of the states. The chart itself is hidden (we set to no color and no line) so only the labels are visible.
The number of slices of the pie is determined by the maximum number of countries per month – it needs to be multiplied by 12. All the slices are sized equally and all has a label, but only the ones that we need will have the name of the state, for the rest, the label is an empty string “”.
Formulas behind the chart
For better understanding we separated the data and the support formulas to two sheets. We prepared the file to be able to work with two different types of data table.
You may have the type of vote in one column (1D):
Using some formulas, this table could easily be re-ordered to a pivot-table-like 2D format. This is what you can see in our file on sheet Transpose_data:
This table is the starting point to build up the help data for the charts.
You can find all the calculations on Support sheet. A key element of calculations is the total number of slices for the pie chart. We need to determine the maximum number of countries per month – this will be the number of slices for each month. We use a named formula: max_size_month for this data (here we adapted Chandoo’s MODE-based formula).
The total number of slices will be 12*max_size_month.
The second step is to determine the slice number for each country, and based on that, calculate the the slice angle in radians. If you think about trigonometry, you will remember that sine and cosine together with radius determines the x and y coordinates of the circle points.
We created a calculation table with the necessary formulas. This table is dynamic and prepared to process more data rows and more vote (or other) categories.
The dots are positioned on 3 circles. We use a fixed parameter in a name: circle_distance to set the radiuses of the circles.
We use a support range for both text labels: country names and month. For month names we avoid to use TEXT function with string parameter “mmm” because in non-english systems it will not work! Instead we use Custom cell formatting with code “mmm” – this kind of formatting is translated automatically to locals.
For country names we set the country to the same pie-slice where the dots are, all the rest will have an empty string as label. The column with country name formula will be assigned to the category axis of the chart, but the month names will be linked to the doughnut-series labels one by one, because it is not possible to set two different axis labels. 🙁
How to put it together?
- Select the Legislative x and Legislative y columns, and create a scatter chart.
- Add two more series using the President x and y and Referendum x and y columns.
- Set the axis minimum to -1 maximum to +1 for both of the axes.
- Delete the axes and the grid lines. You can see something like this:
The dots do not form a circle yet, but after you add the pie chart, the shape of the plot area will be a perfect square, so the circle will appear. - Add a new series named for_label using arr_pie both for x and y values:
- Set the chart type of this series to pie and set no fill, no border. Now the dots form perfect circle.
- Link the category axis for this data series to the support column with Label States. (In the Select Data dialogue box click on the “for_label” series, then the Edit button. Select the range from the sheet.)
- Add labels to the pie slices. Set it to show Category name and position Outside end.
- Add two more series (month and month_label) using arr_12 for the values.
- Set the chart type of these two series to doughnut, and set no borders. Color every second slice to darker gray.
- Add data labels for the inner circle, and link the labels one by one to the sheet cells with month names. (Select one label, click on the formula bar, type = and click on the appropriate cell you want to link the label to.)
- Finally you have to hide the 0 data points which appear in the middle of the chart. Add a new xy data series (named “white series”) with fixed values ={0} for x and y. Set a marker of series to the same color as the background of your chart, and use a marker large enough to cover the unnecessary point. 🙂
+1. You can add new xy series if you need – the calculations are already done on the sheets. It is not problem to use over-sized ranges, the error values will become 0 and will appear in the center of the circle – covered by the white series. BUT important for the proper covering, the white series must be the very-last series, so after adding new series, check the order, and move the white series to the bottom of the list.
Bonus: rotate the chart labels using VBA
As you can see on the above picture all the labels are horizontal. To rotate it to radial direction a piece of VBA code is needed. We created this code and published on our site – please feel free to use it for this chart or your other charts (see the link below).
Download the example files
Click here to download the files. Examine the formulas, chart settings and formatting to learn more. This is a highly advanced chart, so take some time to go thru it. You will learn a lot.
Learning points and links:
- Be careful using TEXT formula with string parameter in international environment! You can read about it here.
- Combining xy scatter with pie chart makes the plot area shape perfect square, so it is easy to create a perfect square area for drawing by the xy coordinates. You can read about it here.
- Rotate chart labels to radial or tangential direction is possible with this VBA code.
Added by Chandoo:
Thank you Frankens Team
Thank you so much Robert, Kris and Gábor for taking time to write this. It is a pleasure hosting your article here. I have been following your website for several months and every time I visit it, I end up learning something interesting, creative and just plain awesome. Thanks for sharing your knowledge, ideas and technique with all of us.
Like this chart? Say thanks to Frankens Team
If you enjoyed this chart, please say thanks to Frankens Team. Also visit their site to see how far you can with Excel.
49 Responses to “Interactive Pivot Table Calendar & Chart in Excel!”
Excellent post again from awesome chandoo.org
This is one of the post to evident, without using macros we can create excellent charts using available excel options.
Slicer is one of the useful option in excel 2010 .. excited to see more options in excel 2013.
Regards,
Saran
http://www.lostinexcel.blogspot.com
Nice one chandoo............... great work done.....
Cool article. Only downside was that I didn't see at first that I needed 2010. Guess I still have to wait awhile before getting to try this out myself.
I consider myself an Excel expert, but you constantly amaze me with posts like this. Fantastic calendar!
Good post, like this little trick!!
How to not show the value in the cell
format the cell to custom with the below
;;;
Could you add lists of holidays to be transferred to the calendar days?
Two lists would be needed: 1) for the holidays that stay fixed (eg, CHristmas), and 2) for the holidays that move around (eg, Thanksgiving).
Such lists would be prepared externally, and the program would transfer their information to the appropriate days.
Wow! This is something amazing. I am going to do some practicals with this and show a sales trend on this. As we have our sales plans weekly basis, this should impress by boss when put in dashboard. Cool.
And thanks1
Chandoo you have a knack of getting on to these great looking very creative ideas!
One thing with calendars I have seen before is not catering for able to enter notes or appointments or project milestones. But with this one it's easy enough to add the extra lines as you have done for the chart concept and link to this other type of info.
For 2003 we could replace slicers with a validation style dropdown couldn't we?
Chandoo, you are awesome;) i was using calender to show my reports, but i had made all months and then underneith date shows the value, man its really awesome . i am going to use this format for my reports.. only draw back for me is i am using 2007. hence no slicer.. may be have to modify with out slicer.
Why not use =weeknum() for the weeknum column?
Great tricks! I love trying to reproduce the charts myself to get the hang of 'em. This one was great.
My only issue is getting the VBA in the year object to refresh the data. I used the VBA provided at the link, and, I can see it in the Macros tab, but, when I click the spinner the data does not update. Any tips?
Thx!
3G
^^Ignore this! NOT ENOUGH COFFEE YET.
I forgot about the "Assign Macro" option
:-s
Just started at chandoo - this is great!
I opted to use the formula =IF(F6>F5,G5,G5+1) for my weeknum - worked for me (I didn't get all the way through the example, since I'm running Excel 2007 - so don't know if that'll affect anything later in the example). I'm open to comments on this alternative approach.
Thanks for creating this website!
VC (Excel student).
Very cool - but now I'm even more excited for the new time controls for Excel 2013!
Great calendar...
I wonder whether we can make a school calendar (Class, subjects, teachers) using this calendar, assuming the weekly plan is duplicated across the year.
I would love to be a part of creating a class schedule...I'm attempting to help a friend (gratis) to do just that - can you point me in the right direction or provide a sample of sorts?
[...] Wow – what do you think of the interactive calendar chart demo above? To achieve this impressive effect you must have Excel 2010 because it utilises slicers, which is a feature introduced in Excel 2010. Find out how this treasure was created on Chandoo’s page. [...]
Hello Chandoo,
Great works! I learn a lot from this website. Here is the problem I met when I follow your tutorial: once I run and save this cool pivot calendar chart , the size of excel file will increase every time. Could you let me know how to figure it out? Thank you for your time in advance.
An excel chart-fan from China.
I already figured it out.
wow, love the calendar, i'm a newbie, found this site and it's amazing.
Got it mostly figured out, but could do with help with your named range 'tblchosen'
I can build the pivots, link the calendars together but can't see how to use index(tblchosen...) to pull through the productivity figures
appreciate any help
thanks
Great. Miss the Today button. Will try and figure a way to add this to the file.
I want to start the week on Monday, not Sunday (MTWTFSS). Re-arranging the calendar tab works however, any month where the 1st is a Sunday starts on the second and totally omits Sun 1. I have been tinkerign for a while, but can't seem to figure this out.
Changing F2 on the 'Calcs' tab to 2 so that the week starts on Monday works.
Cutting & pasting Sunday on the 'Pivot Calendar' tab and moving all cells up 1 row works.
However, using April 2013 for example, you lose the 1st off of the pivot calendar so that the month starts on 2 April. What should happen is the first row should only show Sun 1 April and then the next row starts Mon 2 April. Still can't fugure out where the problem lies.
"Further Enhancements:
Adjust week start to Monday: Likewise, you can modify your formulas to adjust weekstart to Monday or any other day you fancy."
I have tinkered with this previously with no success, does anyone know which formulas require tinkering, I have only succeeded in breaking this in an effort start a week on a Monday.
[...] Interactivo Artículo original var dd_offset_from_content = 50; var dd_top_offset_from_content = 0; Tags: 2013, calendario, [...]
Completely off topic, but how do you create those animated pictures in your tutorials? It is not a movie (like the Youtube movie), so what software do you use to create such high quality "animated" pictires? Thanks
Jeroen
the animated pics are called Animated Gifs
they are made using Camtasia
Refer: http://chandoo.org/wp/about/what-we-use/
This is fairly easy to do just using calendar formulas, which would be quicker, and doesn't need VBA? Am I missing something?
[...] on how to generate an interactive calendar using pivot tables. Please check out Chandoo’s Interactive Pivot Table Calendar & Chart in Excel before reading this, as I want to go through how I used his method to adapt a calendar which was [...]
Great tip shared by you... howevr would appreciate if you could mention in your tricks about excel version. The example above would work only in excel 2010 and above I believe. Please help me if there is any way we can use the tip in excel 2007 as well..
Many Thanks,
Regards,
FK
Hi, I'm going to give this a shot, but one small question before I do. Can a linked cell be updated based on the date that is selected from the calendar? The calendar is really cool and this would make is especially good to use (and easy and fast).
Regards,
swissfish.
This post is awesome, and using your instructions, I was able to get this to work with a pivot table that pulls directly from a Project Server database. It was a bit complicated to get the day to sum correctly, but I managed to finagle it. I hope you don't mind if I link back to you when I post my instructions.
Thanks for giving me a starting point for this!
[...] http://chandoo.org/wp/2012/09/12/interactive-pivot-calendar/ [...]
This is great, and pretty much everything I was looking for.
However, I already have a large spreadsheet, and I want to include your worksheets in it. I copied all the worksheets and the Module 1, but I can't get it to work. What else do I need to transfer / update please?
Hello there, is it possible to use this pivot to produce a calendar style chart, with returns multiple data per date, which on the calendar then, when clicked links to the data to provide more background information? What do you think? I'd love if I could pivot when i need. thanks, m
Hi, did you ever figure out how to do this? I would love to find a way...
This is amazing and will work well for my calendar project! My question is, how can I expand the calendar to fit a standard sheet of paper?
Wow - this is so creative. I'm taking the basic idea and building a reservation calendar.
Question: How do you get the month and year slicers on a different page than the pivot tables? I'd like to have my final calendar on a separate page from the pivot.
[…] http://chandoo.org/wp/2012/09/12/interactive-pivot-calendar/ […]
This is perfect...is there a way to add notes/tasks to the individual days?
Excel will not let me insert blank rows between lines in the pivot table. I am use Excel 2013 - is there a pivot table tools command that must be used?
I can create the pivot table calender with a year spinner & month slicer but I do not see how to display the the attendance information that I have in the original data table.
Thank you for the wonderful post and I am sorry for my lack of understanding...
Excellent!
Please show me how to add an alternative calendar to this calendar, Chinese or lunar calendar (and by lunar I don't mean phases of the moon), like what they still use in Asia
Thanks
Christopher
[…] Wow – what do you think of the interactive calendar chart demo above? To achieve this impressive effect you must have Excel 2010 because it utilises slicers, which is a feature introduced in Excel 2010. Find out how this treasure was created on Chandoo’s page. […]
Hello my name is Maurice, excuse me for my further request, but believe me, without your help priprio not know how to solve this problem.
So: always using a chart positioned on an excel sheet I wanted to match each square (series) to a single cell, to create a perpetual calendar.
Now everything works fine; except that for a fact, and it is this: In the calendar as you well know some numbers may not be apparent until certain conditions, which I solved by writing this "= O code (AA5 = DATE ( $ H $ 1; MONTH ($ AD $ 12) +1; 1)) and the game and done.
Now I would like to achieve the same thing using the Chart; How can I do to make this happen! let me also just a practical example so that I can understand all the rest then I'll do; Thanks Greetings from A.Maurizio
Link Program : Link: https://app.box.com/s/lhqva3eji0xcf2nmk8lxyki88tt1mi5t
Great info, thanks for sharing
Hi,
I love your calendar however I am modifying it for use in displaying employee performance metrics on a day by day basis.
I see where tblChosen and tblDates are named ranges however I cannot find them anywhere.
Are they assigned to specific cells because I cannot tell.
I see both of them in the Name Manager, which tells me what they refer to but does not give a value or cell location.
@Mike
With the Names in the Name Manager
Simply select the name
Then click in the Refers To: box at the Bottom
Excel will take you to where the Named Range is referring to
[…] Wow – what do you think of the interactive calendar chart demo above? To achieve this impressive effect you must have Excel 2010 because it utilises slicers, which is a feature introduced in Excel 2010. Find out how this treasure was created on Chandoo’s page. […]
Hi, Chandoo
This Pivot Calendar is an excellent idea. I’ve done one for myself using your guidelines. I just need something I’m not being able to do. I need that when I open the file the default date is set to today’s date. I know how to do it with conditional formatting. But I think I’ll need some vba coding for this. Can you please help me with this. Thanks in advance