Today, lets learn how to create an interesting chart. This, called as network chart helps us visualize relationships between various people.
Demo of interactive network chart in Excel
First take a look at what we are trying to build.
Looks interesting? Then read on to learn how to create this.
Note: thanks to Hans whose email question inspired me to create this chart.
Tutorial to create interactive network chart in Excel
Note: This tutorial requires intermediate-to-advanced Excel knowledge. So if you are beginner, learn the basics & advanced concepts first and then comeback for this.
In order to create this chart in Excel, we need to first understand various ingredients of it.
As you can see, the chart contains these parts:
- A set of dots, each representing one stakeholder
- A set of grayish thick & dotted lines representing all relationships between people.
- A set of green thick & blue dotted lines representing relationships for the selected person.
- A slicer for person selection (can be replaced with list box or clickable cells in Excel 2007 or below)
- Summary statistics of the selected person
Getting started with the relationship data
To simplify our tutorial, lets assume we are talking about relationships between just 4 people, named Ash, Billy, Cynthia & Darren.
Our relationship matrix looks like this:
- 0 means no relationship
- 1 means weak relationship (for example: Ash & Billy just know each other)
- 2 means strong relationship (for example: Cynthia & Billy are friends)
The downloadable workbook is created to take up to 20 stakeholders.
Geometry of the network chart
If we draw the relationships between these 4 people (Ash, Billy, Cynthia & Darren) on a paper, it would look like this:
The 2 things we need to determine are,
- The location of dots (where person names are printed)
- The lines (starting & ending point of lines)
Plotting dots around circle
We need to plot our dots in such a way that gap between each dot is same. This will create a balanced chart.
What shape satisfies our need for such equal gaps? A circle of course.
Hey wait, I don’t see a circle in the chart you have shown…?
Thats right. We don’t need to draw a circle. We just need to plot dots around it.
- So we have 4 stakeholders, we need 4 dots
- If we have 12 stakeholders, we need 12 dots
- If we have 20, we need 20 dots.
Assuming the origin of our circle is (x,y), radius is r and theta is 360 divided by number of dots we need,
the first dot (x1,y1) on the circle will be at this position:
x1 = x + r*COS(theta)
y1 = y + r*SIN(theta)
[Related: How to create a spoke chart in Excel]
Once all the dots are calculated & plugged in to an XY chart (scatter plot), lets move on.
Plotting the lines
Lets say we have n people in the network. So that means, each person can have a maximum of n-1 relationships.
So the total possible lines in our chart are n*(n-1)/2
We need to divide it by 2 as if A knows B, then B knows A too. But we need to draw only 1 line.
My network chart template is set up to work with up to 20 people. So that means, the maximum number of lines we can have will be 190
Each line requires a separate series to be added to the chart. That means, we need to add 190 series of data just for 20 people. And that satisfies only one type of line (either dotted or thick). If we want different lines based on type of relationship, then we need to add another 190 series.
This is painful & ridiculous.
Fortunately there is a way out.
We can use far fewer series and still plot the same chart.
Lets say we have 4 people – A B C & D. For the sake of simplicity, lets assume the co-ordinates of these 4 are
- A – (0,0)
- B – (0,1)
- C – (1,1)
- D – (1,0)
And lets say, A has relationships with B, C & D.
That means we need to draw 3 lines, from A to B, A to C & A to D.
Now, instead of supplying 3 series for the chart, what if we supply one long series that looks like this:
(0,0), (0,1), (0,0), (1,1), (0,0), (1,0)
That means we are just drawing one long line from A to B to A to C to A to D. Agreed that it is not a straight line, but Excel scatter plots can draw any line as long as you provide a set of co-ordinates.
PS: This is a trick I learned from Roberto of E90E50. He used this trick in the winning entry of our recent dashboard contest.
See this illustration to understand the technique.
So instead of 190 series of data for the chart, we just need 20 series.
In the final chart, we actually have 40 + 2 + 1 series of data. This is because,
- 20 lines for weak relationships (dotted lines)
- 20 lines for strong relationships (thick lines)
- 1 line for highlighted person’s weak relationships
- 1 line for highlighted person’s strong relationships
- 1 set of no line & just dots for the people
How to generate all the 20 series of data:
This requires following logic:
- Assuming we need lines for the relationship of person n.
- That person’s dot location will be (Xn, Yn) and already calculated earlier (in the plotting dots around circle)
- We need total of 40 rows of data
- Every odd row will have (Xn, Yn)
- For every even row
- Divide the row number by 2 to get person number (say m)
- (Xn,Yn) if there is no relationship between n and m
- (Xm,Ym) if there is a relationship
We need MOD & INDEX formulas to express this logic in Excel.
Examine the download workbook to understand how its done.
Once all the line co-ordinates are calculated, add them to our scatter plot and format.
I used a macro to automate the formatting. It can be done manually too, just takes a little patience.
Slicer for selecting a person
This works only in Excel 2010 or above.
Select the first 2 columns of relationship matrix & create a pivot table.
Now, insert a slicer on Person name column.
Using simple IF formula, extract the selected person name from pivot table (examine download file for the logic).
And using the name, extract the subset of line data to separate range (2 sets of data – one for weak & one for strong relationships)
Add this new data to our scatter plot and format.
Format the slicer (using slicer styles) so that it looks slick.
Related: formatting slicers using styles.
NOTE About Slicers: If you change or add any data, you must refresh (from Data ribbon) to update the slicer. This can be automated with a macro, but I want to keep this file macro free.
[Alternative] Selecting a person with form controls
You can use either a list box or a range of clickable cells. See the 2003 compatible download file for an example of this.
Summary statistics
Using simple formulas extract statistics for the selected person and show them near the chart.
Adding labels to the chart (person names)
In our chart, we are showing person names instead of regular label like X or Y value. This is done with value from cells label feature in Excel 2013.
For earlier versions of Excel, I recommend using Rob Bovey’s excellent XY Chart Labels add-in.
Putting it all together
Once everything is ready, clean up the chart, slicer and other elements, put them together. And we are ready to go.
Download Network Relationships Interactive Chart Template
Click here to download the chart template workbook. The download is a ZIP file and it contains 3 workbooks – compatible with Excel 2013, 2010 & 2003+. Use the version that you need.
Please examine the formulas & chart settings to understand how it is constructed.
Note: Hit Refresh from Data ribbon to change slicer once you have added or modified data.
When to use network relationship chart?
A network graph is a good place to explore relationships between people in a project or team. It is especially useful when selecting a sub-set of people from large group to closely work on a project.
Any alternatives?
There is a popular Excel Add-in named NodeXL that can help you visualize and analyze relationships between people in a more in-depth fashion.
Check out Chord diagram & Cosmograph from E90E50 site for other ways to present this data.
Do you use these kind of charts?
I have used network charts earlier to depict relationships between various people or things. But I have never created such charts in Excel, I always used either Power Point or some other drawing program to create them. That is why I am excited about this chart. Figuring out the formula & graphing logic was fun.
What about you? Have you used such charts before? How do you like the network chart presented here? Please share your thoughts using comments.
55 Responses to “Quickly Fill Blank Cells in a Table [Reader Tip]”
this can be done in 3 steps:
1. select the blank cells (as described above)
2. select the cell with the value you want to copy (CTRL-CLICK to add to the selection)
3. place cursor into formula bar and hit CTRL-ENTER
please ignore or delete my comment - it solves a different problem: copying a single value to all blank cells. apologies.
That is a great method and it saves me a lot of time! I first heard about it from Mr Excel in this video - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHmh_viESuw. He has a neat way of doing the paste special values at the end of his video.
Hi!
I fill blank cells with an almost identical method; go to any the first blank cell in any column and place the equation and enter (=D2, for the same example above); then copy that cell, select the columns/range you want to fill (even if in different columns), Special, go to Blanks, Paste (default), copy all range and paste as values.
although the two methods are almost identical, what i use might be less hectic regarding entering formulas without clicking any of the cells (step 7)
ie:
1. fill an empty cell with using =D2(cell above)
2. copy D3 (the cell with the formula)
2. Select blank cells after selecting the range with empty cells (steps 1,2,3,4 and 5)
3. paste (normal)
4. copy then paste as values
BR
AQ
Great tip. I'll use it later today!
Martin -Thank You! This wonderful tip will save me a great deal of time each week.
Thanks Martin! Up to this point, I've always used a clumsy combination of filters and fill-down's. This is much cleaner.
Fantastic. Thanks for sharing.
None of these steps are necessary, Excel has this feature built into the ribbon.
Click on any row label in the table where there are blanks under it.
Click on the PivotTable Tools>Design tab on the ribbon
Click the Report Layout button in the Layout group at the far left
Select the option in the list
Done
To remove the duplication, use the feature right below that option.
There is a slightly simpler way and more flexible. Hihglight the required cells - which could be the column only in your table. Do the Ctrl-G, Alt-S, K, Enter (or Goto, Special, Blank Cells) so that they are highlighted and Type ={up arrow}, Ctl-Enter. This will make the cells equal the cell above - you do not have to enter any address at all. The technique can obviously be adapted to many situations. An example of the practical use for this is when you have saved an Inventory report from an accounting program that prints a heading (or something) on one line and prints details of that group (the heading) on subsequent lines (without the heading).
Hi Martin,
great trick! If only I had known it earlier, it would have saved me quite some time...
Not again, thanks!
I came across this in a class recently myself and posted a tutorial on my blog. The Special area of the Go To dialogue box is wicked. Some great options in there, hidden away waiting to be found.
Good work Martin.
Hi Martin,
Many thanks for sharing this powerful trick. Saves alot of time.
Gabriel
Please give credit where credit is due. Posted on June 30, 1998: http://www.mvps.org/dmcritchie/excel/fillempt.htm
Ahhh... Very neat trick. Thank you, Martin.
Ken, I tried to follow your post but could not get it to work. Could not find options
I have been using this trick for ages and would be lost without it.
Thank you very much!!! I had other tricks to deal with it, but this one is way faster and easier!!!
@BigG: Good resource there. Thanks for sharing the link with us. Please note that, this technique is not new. I am sure many Excel users would have discovered this already. We have not copied or inspired from David's article. It was just a happy coincidence.
@Ken: Your technique works only with Pivot Tables made in Excel 2010 or above.
Thanks Martin!! Nice post 🙂
@Chandoo: I also use the ASAP utilities add- in available in the link below:
http://www.asap-utilities.com/download-asap-utilities.php
This summarizes lot of hidden features in excel (like using Find function on entire workbook, password protecting all sheets at once, copying print setting of sheets etc.,) and is quite useful for beginners like me 😉
Thanks Martin and Ahmad Qadah. This is useful. I previously used to ask the senders to retrieve the data again so that I did not have the blanks.
Nice trick. I always use the specialcells method of the range object in code to access this powerful goto special dialog box in vba - a trick that Chandoo taught me in vba school - which is another reason you should join (a free bit of promotion for you Chandoo..!)
🙂
Yes I have seen this one before so credit may belong elsewhere. Never the less still especially useful where a legacy system report is sent to a text file which is subsequently re-imported to Excel but the original report is indented by groups. You can then recreate a complete data record for each report line
NB Different Ken to above
Thanks Martin - great post. I often work with data in this form and I usually fill in the blanks manually, by copying and dragging a cell value down - this way is much less prone to human error!
One challenge.. the last step where I change formula to constants. This replaces any formulas that I have as well. What If I want to change the formula to constants only where I replaced them with blank ?
Hi martin, thanks a million 🙂
Nicely explained Martin, thanks for sharing this tip. As Tanja says, this method is far less error-prone. When I first learned this method it saved me lots of time, so I decided to create a video on Youtube to share it with others. In my 3 minute video I compare side-by-side two methods of filling in blanks on 500 rows of data (1) using the fill handle, (2) using Go To > Special > Select Blanks
Just like in Mr Excel's video shared by Andrew in comment (3), I used the right mouse button to drag the selection border to do paste special values at the last step.
If you want to check out my video, visit this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9TDcVOKbm34&hd=1
I've came across this a month ago, and it really is a gem of a tip!
Thanks. Great tip and useful for a range of excel projects 🙂
Vishy,
When you Ctrl Enter the formula into all blank cells, Excel keeps the formerly blank cells highlighted, revealing the new values.
At this point you can choose to Copy and Paste Special them as constants. All other formulas remain untouched.
BigG,
I was not familiar with that link and I certainly didn't copy the article from it. As Chandoo commented this is not a new technique, and I am hardly the first to have written about it.
@Martin,
using office 2007; you can not copy multiple selection, what version are you using?
Thanks
Thanks, Really nice, really helpful.
wow, how cool is that! Thank you for this tipp!! GREAT!
I thought this was a great tip. I had never done such things with tables in Excel (having only converted to 2007 a couple of months ago, I soon discovered what a versatile tool they can be). So I decided to create my own copy and duplicate the process. Taking it a step further, I recorded the steps in VBA and used those as a guideline to create this simple macro which accomplishes the same function.
Caveat: this will only work when a cell in the table is selected and it will replace ALL formulas in the table with their values.
Sub FillTableBlanks()
' Macro created 20 October 2011 by Jason B White
'Declare Variable
Dim strTable As String
'Get Current Table Name
strTable = ActiveCell.ListObject.Name
'Select Current Table
Range(strTable).Select
'Fill Blank Cells With Formulas
Selection.SpecialCells(xlCellTypeBlanks).FormulaR1C1 = "=R[-1]C"
'Paste Values Of Formulas
Selection = Selection.Value
End Sub
I hope that submitting macros is sanctioned in this forum. My previous post was my first ever attempt at contributing to an Excel blog. And I'm unaware if there is a way to differentiate macro snippets by using tags as I've seen in other Excel VBA forums.
I just wanted to mention that I figured out a way to modify my macro so that it doesn't overwrite ALL formulas in the table, but only those which were filled in by the macro.
Modifying the fourth section (Fill Blank Cells With Formulas) as shown below accomplishes that:
'Fill Blank Cells With Formulas
Selection.SpecialCells(xlCellTypeBlanks).Select
Selection.FormulaR1C1 = "=R[-1]C"
Hi,
I face a similar situation in office and use the below macro after selecting the range of data across which I want to duplicate the data below.
Sub FillBlankCellsSelectionDown()
Dim rAcells As Range, rLoopCells As Range
Set rAcells = Selection
For Each rLoopCells In rAcells
If rLoopCells.Value = "" Then
rLoopCells.FillDown
End If
Next rLoopCells
End Sub
re: paste special -> values
Drag the Paste Values toolbutton on to the standard toolbar next to the Paste button and save a couple of clicks.
Hi everyone many thanks for sharing this solutions but do not work Excel 2003? right? Thanks
@Alejandra:
I know that the macro I created was in Excel 2007. I assume that it's probably specific to 2007 (or 2010), but can't be sure, as I no longer have access to a PC running Excel 2003.
I have to admit that I didn't even realize that tables existed when I was using 2003.
Filling blank cells (cleaning-up the pivot-table aftermath) is one of our "daily-ritual", to dealing with those, we've create a short-cut (one of the many) to very quickly fill-up those blanks.
Basically what we need to do is to select the whole area to be filled-up (with the value above), and click a button, VBA automatically deals with the rest.
We use VBA to handle this problem just as mentioned above by several other people, however, I think we'll also need to consider the extreme (well, actually not that extreme if you're dealing with lots of data on a day-to-day basis) case: that the "blank" cells are highly fragmented, e.g. the maximum "areas" that Excel 2003 can handle is around 6500 (sorry I couldn't find the exact spec).
Thus, in our function, there's another step to cut-off the number of cells going into the "specialcells" function, just to make sure that the function will run in every condition.
I just wanna give a solution to similar problem which i face regularly while copying the data from a pivot as it is. I apply the following solution which i think is the easiest one on earth. Select a cell F2 (considering that column E is the last column filled with data) and type the following formula =IF(ISBLANK(A2),F1,A2). Now just drag the formula equivalent to the length and breadth of the entire range of data which want to fill in this case drag it from F2:I21 , remember do not apply on the cost column.
Now just copy whole new range i.e: F2:I21 and paste special it over the former range A2:D21. That's it 🙂
If u find any problem related to this formula u r welcome to contact me.
thanks martin
This doesn't work in excel 2007. So request to Martin , if he can confirm which version he has used. Guess 2010.
@BK
my method (comment #4) which is almost the same as Martins works on excel 2007... i've been using it since 2007 came out actually.
Excelent trick, thanks Martin.
[...] Quickly Fill Blank Cells in a Table [...]
eXCEEELLTOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO......!
Many thanks to Martin.
im getting an error no cells were found why is this
Very cool trick!
I'm facing a similar problem, but I'd like to use a formula to pick the first non-empty above the referenced cell, and keep the empty cells empty. Any solution?
Example case:
I've got 3 columns, 1) consecutive dates, 2) my current weight, 3) my BMI. The first data row would be like: A2) jan-1, B2) 70 (kg), C2) =70/1,75^2 (because my height, 175cm, is pretty constant)
Now of course I forget to write down my weight on jan-2nd, so the formula would return 0. If my weight is blank, I'd like to refer to the last 'non-blank' weight (up the list of course, so jan-1st).
The solution on this page would solve my problem partially, but every time I leave cells blank, I have to repeat these steps. A formula would prevent this, AND I can still see which days were actually not filled in.
[…] http://chandoo.org/wp/2011/10/17/fill-blank-cells-in-a-table/ […]
Thxs! Yes, "knew" you could do this with "one" col of data...never thought to try it with >>multiple<< cols...Cool!
Thanks a lot i was searching this thing for many days ,
Thanks a lot to martin
Thanks a lot to martin
Thanks a lot i was searching this thing for many days ,
Thanks a lot to martin
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