We all know that area charts are great for understanding how a list of values have changed over time. Today, let’s learn how to create an area chart that shows different colors for upward & downward movements.
The inspiration for this came from a recent chart published in Wall Street Journal about Chinese stock markets (shown below).
We will try to create a similar chart using Excel.
This is what we are going to come up with.
Looks interesting? Read on…
Creating an area chart with different colors for up & down slopes
Step 1. Gather the data
For our example, let’s use Indian stock market data for last 10 years. Specifically, BSE Sensex weekly closing prices between 1-July-2005 and 27-July-2015.
There are 3 columns in this data – Date, Closing price & Volume, as shown below. Let’s say all of this data is in a tabled named data that starts at cell B6.
Step 2. Find out when to switch colors
The next step is to find out when to switch colors.
We can add 3 additional columns to our data to spot the switches, and split data to Advances & Declines accordingly.
Here is what we get.
Detecting when a switch occurs:
When looking at closing price for a day, we need to know if the line direction has changed or not. To detect this, we can use a formula like this:
Assuming the closing price we are looking at is in cell C7,
=C7<>MEDIAN(C6:C8) will tell us if the value in C7 is switching the trend or not.
Why does this formula work? Think again. For more on this technique, refer to BETWEEN Formula in Excel.
Step 3. Expanding the data so that we can create an area chart
If we create an area chart with just the data from above step (only advances & declines columns), we end up with a chart that looks like this.
As you can see, the green & red areas (advancing & declining data) have tiny white space between them.
This is because, when we switch from green to red, the green series goes from peak to 0 and simultaneously, red series goes from 0 to peak, creating an effect like below (chart made from sub-set of data)
To create correct shading effect, we need to expand the data so that on dates when switching happens, there is a duplicate row.
See below illustration to understand what we need.
Writing formulas to expand data
We can use simple arithmetic along with healthy dose of INDEX formulas to create expanded data set. Can you figure out the formulas yourself as homework?
Please examine the downloadable workbook to understand these formulas more.
After expanding the data, the same area chart looks like this:
Step 4. Create area chart from expanded dataset
Select the expanded advances & declines columns and create an area chart from them. Make sure horizontal axis labels are pointing to the expanded date column we constructed in step 3.
Your chart is ready now.
We can add few more bells and whistles to it and come up with below output.
- The volume chart at the bottom is a sparkline
- We can find longest bull & bear rallies using longest winning streak formula
Download Area Chart with different colors for up & down slopes workbook
Please click here to download area chart with different colors workbook. Play with the chart & formulas to learn more.
How do you like area chart with different shades?
I think this is a powerful technique to quickly eye-ball data and see where directional changes are occurring, what patterns (if any) are they following etc.
If you observe carefully, our Excel version and WSJ’s charts differ in one key aspect. In WSJ chart, they are shading bull & bear markets where overall trend is upwards or downwards with minor changes during the market period. What formula / approach changes do you think are necessary to make exact replica of WSJ chart in Excel?
Also, do share your feedback about this chart and how you are planning to reuse the concepts at your work.
Addendum – Moving average based smoothing of trends
We can use simple moving averages to smooth the trends so that we can spot upward / downward movements better.
Here is an example chart.
You may download this workbook to examine the formulas & chart.
Charts to show change over time
Understanding change is a key component of any analysis. Check out below charting techniques & tutorials to learn few more valuable skills.
- Narrating the story of change – Case study on how fast America changes its mind
- Advances vs. Declines chart
- How tax burden has changed over years – interactive Excel chart
- Use indexed charts when analyzing change over time
- Never show simple numbers in your dashboards
- Comparing with benchmarks – shading under / over achievement
21 Responses to “Distinct count in Excel pivot tables”
The distinct count option works well but I have found that if I have a date field and want to group by year, month, etc. that option seems to be disabled. I need to do both, distinct count and group by year/month.
Example data; sales orders with item quantities with dates.
Challenge; sum the item quantities, count the distinct orders and group by month. How do I do this?
Perhaps that's not possible due to the grouping?
@Al... When you use data model based pivots, you cannot group values manually anymore. Why not use Excel 2016's default date grouping option? In this case we have just a few dates, so Excel is not grouping them, but if you have an year's worth of data, when you make the pivot with date in the row label area, Excel automatically groups them. If you have fewer dates or want to use your own grouping, just create a table with all dates, add columns with month, week, year etc. Then connect this table (these types of tables are usually called as calendar tables) to your data on date field as a relationship. Now you can create reports by month, quarter etc easily.
Is this the only way to do it in 2013? I find it rather cumbersome to have to create another data table listing dates with the another column for MONTH() and YEAR() to be able to summarise data for senior level...
I know people find adding calendar tables cumbersome, but it is a best practice and let's you add more layers of analysis quite easily. For example, adding analysis by weekday vs. weekend or by financial quarter or YTD calculations (you would need either Power Pivot DAX or some very carefully setup pivot table value field settings)
I had absolutely no idea this was possible. Very useful, nice work!
Doesn't work for 2010 version though (or at least not my works version)
Hi ,
The post has the following in it :
These instructions work only in Excel 2016, Office 365 and Excel 2013.
when i have 2 different Pivot tables, one without the enabled “Add this data to data model” option, and the other one with it enabled.. is there anyway i can link slicers between them?
if the answer is NO,, what to do ?
Quick note, the “Add this data to data model” option is not available for the Mac version.
perhaps outside scope of this article but I have found when I attempt to create a pivot table from an external data source (connection to a sql view) the "Add this data to data model" becomes greyed out. Anybody experienced and found a solution so I can start getting distinct count in my pivot tables?
Is there a way to still add a calculated field when using distinct count?
I found I can't change the date source after tick the " add this data to the data model", can you help to adv how to change the date source in such case?
Is there a way to update the source once you have added to the data model? I receive a new spreadsheet weekly and would like to update the connection so my tables pull from the new source.
Hi Crhis, I like how you have hulk (superhero) as your avatar. Do you know that there is a superhero in Excel too? It's Power Query. You can use it to solve your problem in a simple click. Here an intro if you need some guidance.
Powerful Introduction to Power Query
A big Thank you. It worked.
Hi, have survey data that I need to analyze but the challenge is that my key fields are showing horizontally. I tried to transpose the fields using Power Query, but unfortunately the new fields are returning same values on a pivot table despite using distinct values
How I can a do a pivot table with discount conts in some columns and then generate shor report filter pages. pls it drives crazy
Hi. Why grand total pivot of distinct count is 13? shouldn't it be 67?
Great Answer! Saved me lots of time!
Thank you!!!
Worked awesome! Thanks!!
Hi Chandoo,
I am using pivot tables for distinct count and now I need to update them with new set of data. But when I update the source data, all the columns and formatting of Pivot table disappears and I need to build it from Scratch.
Is there a possibility that I can update the source data with new rows added and also retain my pivot tables?