Last week we learned how to answer questions like, “How many tiles in a room?” using Excel. We learned about CONVERT function and fraction number format settings in Excel.
But why stop at calculation? We can even model a room full of tiles, thanks to Excel’s grid nature.
So today, we will learn how to create a room layout like this using Excel:
If you like the demo, read on to learn.
Step 1: Set up input cells
To model tiles in a room, we need 4 inputs. Lets call them by below names.
- room.length
- room.width
- tile.length
- tile.width
Step 2: Calculate number of tiles required
The basic formula for calculating total tiles required is this:
=ROUNDUP((room.length*room.width)/(tile.length*tile.width), 0)
But this formula yields in an unrealistic solution as we do not want to have fractional tiles everywhere. So, a better way to calculate this is,
=ROUNDUP(room.length / tile.length,0) * ROUNDUP(room.width / tile.width,0)
Although this formula is technically correct, you may save a few tiles if you rotate the them.
That is,
ROUNDUP(room.length / tile.width,0) * ROUNDUP(room.width / tile.length,0) can be smaller than ROUNDUP(room.length / tile.length,0) * ROUNDUP(room.width / tile.width,0) in some cases, as shown in above demo.
So we need a way to flip tile dimensions if that saves us a few bucks. That is done by,
Step 3: Flipping tile dimensions with a switch
Insert a check box and link to a blank cell, say F6.
[Related: How to use a check box in Excel]
Now, using F6 value (either TRUE or FALSE), flip the values of tile.length & tile.width using IF() formula.
Step 4: Create a 100×100 grid
Although you can model the floor plan of entire Buckingham palace in Excel, lets restrict ourselves to rooms of size 100×100.
Select 101 columns and resize them small enough so you can see all of them in a single screen, like 10 pixels wide.
Select 101 rows and adjust their height so that you can see as many of them as possible in a single screen (10 pixels tall should do).
Type running numbers in first column & row. The final grid looks this this:
Step 5: Modeling the room layout using conditional formatting
So we have a big 100×100 grid where we need to draw
- Outer boundary for the room as per room.length & room.width
- Inner tile boundaries as per tile.length & tile.width
Set up conditional formatting rules for room boundary
There are 4 rules required.
- Draw vertical left border if the topmost row = 1
- Draw vertical right border if the topmost row = room.length
- Draw horizontal top border if the left-most column = 1
- Draw horizontal bottom border if the left-most column = room.width
Below, see one of the rules.
You can find other conditional formatting rules in the downloadable workbook.
Step 6: Modeling Tiles using conditional formatting
While we need 4 rules for the room boundary, we just need 2 rules for tile boundaries.
- Draw vertical right border if the topmost row value is divisible by tile.length
- Draw horizontal bottom border if the left-most column value is divisible by tile.width
We do not need rules for vertical left border or horizontal top border because they will be drawn by previous tile.
See one of the rules below:
That’s all. Our room model is ready. Go ahead and see how it looks when tile it.
Download Example Workbook
Click here to download room tiles model workbook and play with it. Examine the conditional formatting rules to understand it better.
Do you apply Conditional Formatting in such creative ways?
I personally think conditional formatting is as good as honey, mangoes or dark chocolate. I love to use a dollop of it in all my Excel recipes.
What about you? Do you use conditional formatting for anything out-of-box 😉 like this? Please share your tips using comments.
Want more? Check out these conditional formatting examples
If you want more on conditional formatting you are in luck. Check out,
- Gantt chart using Excel conditional formatting
- Baby feeding schedule using conditional formatting
- Todo list using Excel conditional formatting
- Making data entry forms awesome with conditional formatting
- Searching data using conditional formatting
- Market segmentation charts with conditional formatting
- More examples on conditional formatting
31 Responses to “Beautiful Budget vs. Actual chart to make your boss love you”
Would be considerably easier just to have a table with the variance shown.
On Step 3, how do you "Add budget and actual values to the chart again"?
There are a few ways to do it.
Easy:
1) Copy just the numbers from both columns (Select, CTRL+C)
2) Select the chart and hit CTRL+V to paste. This adds them to chart.
Traditional:
1) Right click on chart and go to "select data..."
2) From the dialog, click on "Add" button and add one series at a time.
One more way to accomplish it is just select the columns into chart. Press Ctrl+C and then press Ctrl+V
Regards
Neeraj Kumar Agarwal
Unfortunately, this doesn't seem to work for me in Excel 2010. The "Var 1" and "Var 2" columns cannot combine two fonts to display the symbol and the figure side-by-side.
Secondly, there is no option to Click on “Value from cells” option when formatting the label options. The only options provided are Series Name, Category Name or Value.
@TheQ47... the emoji font also has normal English letters, so if you use that font, then you should be ok. I am assuming your computer doesn't have that font or hasn't been upgraded for emoji support.
Reg. Excel 2010, you can manually link each label to a cell value. Just select one label at a time (click on labels, wait a second, click on an individual label) and press = and link it to the label var 1 or var 2.
I am using excel 2010, please explain how to apply Step 12
Regards
Neeraj Kumar Agarwal
Hi Neeraj,
"Value from cells" option is only available in Excel 2013 or above. In older versions, you have to manually adjust the label value by linking each label seperately.
Read this please: https://chandoo.org/wp/change-data-labels-in-charts/
Sir, you are just awesome.
Your creativity has no limit.
Regards
Neeraj Kumar Agarwal
Hi Chandoo,
I just found your website, and really love it. It helps me a lot to be an Excel expert 😉
Currently I am facing with a problem at step 11:
Var1 Var2
D30%
A5%
B0%
B4%
B7%
C10%
C13%
D27%
I42%
Though at mapping table, I used windings, here formula uses calibra. How I can change it? I am able to change only the whole cell. In this case numbers will be Windings too.
Thanks for your help!
Hi Mariann... Welcome to Chandoo.org and thanks for your comment.
If you wanted to use symbols from wingdings and combine them with % numbers, then you need to setup two labels. One with symbol, in wingdings font and another with value in normal font. Just add the same series again to the chart, make it invisible, add labels. You may need to adjust the alignment / position of label so everything is visible.
[…] firs article explains how you can enhance your charts with symbols. You can simply insert any supported symbol into your data and charts. To some extend you can […]
You're a good person, thank you to share your knowledge with us, I will try to do in my work
Great visualization of variance. My question is that is this possible in powerbi?
How would you go about it?
HELLO, WHY CANT I FIND VALUES FOR LABELS IN EXCEL 2013
Dear chanddo sir,
What to do if we have dynamic range for Chart. How this will work. can you able to make the same thing works on dynamic range.
Sir Chandoo,
Good Day!
First, I'd like to say that I am very grateful for your work and for sharing all these things with us.
I tried to do this chart but it seems that the symbols don't work with text (abs(var%),"0%") unless we keep the Windings font style.
The problem is, it converts the text into symbol as well and you wont see the 0% anymore. I'm using Windows 7.
WOW - Segoe UI Emoji
This is the greatest discovery for me this month 🙂 Thanks for sharing.
Here's my two-cents:
https://wmfexcel.com/2019/02/17/a-compelling-chart-in-three-minutes/
Sir This is awesome chart, and very easy to made because of your way to explain is very simple , everyone can do. Thank you
one problem i am facing, I hv made this chart , but when i am inserting data table to chart it is showing two times , how can i resolve this
in this chart when i am adding new month data for example first i made this chart jan to mar but when i add data for the apr month graphs updated automatically but labels are missing for that new month
Hi Renuka,
Please make sure the formulas for labels are also calculated for extra months. Just drag down the series and set label range to appropriate address.
So I am playing with the Actual chart here - but amounts are bigger than your - you have 600 as Budget - my budget is 104,000 - is there a way to shorten that I am unaware of
thank you - I LOVE YOUR SITE
Thanks for the tips and tricks on Excel. In the Planned versus Actual chart examples, you use multiple values (ex. multiple Categories in above). How can this be done when we have only 1 set of values? For example if I have only this:
Planned Actual
SOW Budget 417480 367551
How can I create a single bar chart like the one above?
Thank you Chandoo.
This one is just perfect for my Quarterly Review presentation on Operational Budget against Actual Performance for the Hospital I'm currently working with.
Just Subscribed today (10 minutes ago)
Is there a way to make the table of data into a pivot table to be able to add a slicer for the graph due to many different categories and months?
Hi, I tried to modify you template with something appropriate for me, and I found a problem. this template was modified by me started with excel 2010, then 2016 and finally 2019. Same thing - somehow appear an error - or didn't show the emoticons for positive percentage or doubled the emoticons for some rows. I suspect to be from excel. if is need it I can sand you my xlsx for study. Please help if you can.
Hi Chandoo,
Could you please check the Var Formula in Step1. You have mentioned budget-actual and when i did this i got different values but when reversed like actual-budget i got the actual value what you have demonstrated in step1.
Please share your view.
This is a great chart (budget vs. actual). However, in trying recreate it, I cannot color in the UP Down bars individually, and they all become formatted with the same color. I'm using Office 365. Look forward to the feedback.
Thanks.
Dan
pls explain in detail step 7
While in the Excel sheet you have used following formula for Var
Var = Actual - Budget
But
in the note, you have written
Var = Budget - Actual
Good Presentation and Data information.thank you so much chandoo.