In the 48th session of Chandoo.org podcast, let’s make some animated charts!!!
What is in this session?
In this podcast,
- Announcements
- Why animate your charts?
- Non-VBA methods to animate charts
- Excel 2013’s built-in animation effects
- Iterative formula approach
- VBA based animation
- Cartoon film analogy
- Understanding the VBA part
- Example animated chart – Sales of a new product
- Resources and downloads for you
Listen to this session
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | RSS
Click here to download the MP3 file.
Resources for making animated charts
Example animated chart (shown in the title image):
Download example animated chart. Play with it to learn more.
More animated charts using Excel:
- Diwali flower pot cracker using animated charts
- Another Diwali animated chart in Excel
- Journey of Hurricane Sandy – Animated Chart
- 3D Dancing pendulums using Excel Charts & VBA
- Designing a clock using Excel
VBA Basics:
- Podcasts:
- Introduction to VBA – CP022
- Using FOR Loops in VBA – CP039
- Articles:
Non-VBA animation using formulas:
Animation without macros [for fun]
Transcript of this session:
Download this podcast transcript [PDF]
How do you create animated charts in Excel?
Now it’s your turn. Do you make animated charts? Please share your techniques and samples in the comments section. Wow us.
8 Responses to “Top 5 keyboard shortcuts for Excel Charts”
As far as I remember (checked, again, 2 minutes ago) in my "Excel 2013" in order to select various chart elements I need to use the Arrow keys and not the TAB key.
Practically, the TAB key does nothing (within a Chart).
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Michael (Micky) Avidan
Thanks for pointing this out. This is how I remember it too, but when I was recording the video yesterday, only TAB key worked. MS must have changed the keys in Excel 2016. I have edited the post to include both keys.
The key navigation on charts is different in 2016.
TAB cycles through a layer of objects (SHIFT+TAB cycles backwards)
ENTER move down a layer
ESC moves up a layer
So on a column chart with title/legend/data labels if you select the plotarea the TAB will go through Title > Legend > Plotarea.
ENTER at plotarea will then select Vertical axis. Tab will take you through
Horizontal axis > gridlines > Series > Horizontal Axis.
ENTER with series selected will then allow you to TAB through individual data points and data labels.
If you ENTER on datalabels you can TAB through each data label.
ALT + F1 : to create default chart
ALT+E S T = CTRL + ALT + V, T : I find that easier to remember
I second what Michael already said about TAB and arrow keys. I can't help but think if this is related to the "," or ";" as separator. I prefer to use the chart tools - layout- drop down box, anyway.
Got to be F11 for instant charting. Highlight your data , hit F11 and voila! ?
Ctrl+1 is the most important chart shortcut. In fact, it works for any Excel object: whatever is selected, Ctrl+1 opens the task pane or dialog to format that object.
Somewhere along the line, maybe when Excel 2016 came out, the arrow keys stopped working to cycle through the elements of a chart. But what works is holding Ctrl while clicking the arrow keys. I haven't gotten used to the Tab and other keys, but as long as Ctrl+Arrow works, I'm good.
And F4 used to be so helpful when formatting a lot of charts. But since Excel 2007 came out, it has been mostly useless. It used to remember a whole set of changes at once, so I get that the newer modeless dialogs make that impractical. But now it only seems to work with formatting of lines and borders, and maybe fills. I find myself writing a lot of VBA one-liners in the Immediate Window to handle these tedious formatting tasks.
after clicking on a chart, is there a shortcut key to copy it?
Thank you for the Alt E S T - tip. This is more than a time saver. Because of dynamic charts or de-activated external references to data when you make the charts, you often have empty charts that are otherwise impossible to format. So this shortcut helps adressing that. I will work with it more and see if there remain some obstacles.