This is a guest post by Chirayu, a member of Chandoo.org forum.
Foreword
I mainly write VBA code in Excel. I am in no means a PowerPoint VBA coder. It’s just that once you understand one type of VBA code it’s simple enough to do a bit of research & figure out the rest through trial and error.
This guide was created because of the question posted here which intrigued me & I drafted up a sample file for the same.
Animating charts in Power Point
Animating Charts in PowerPoint cannot be done without the help of 3rd party software’s that create a flash file of the chart & embed it into the presentation.
However there is a workaround for this. Save your chart as multiple images & insert them (overlapping on top of each other). Use VBA on Developer tab Controls such as Combo Box, Option Button, Check Box etc. to “Bring To Front”” the corresponding image. Thus giving the illusion of an Animated Chart in PowerPoint.
This guide will teach you how to animate the charts, using the three Developer tab Controls that were mentioned before. The code & functionality only works in Slide Show Mode. File must be saved as PowerPoint Macro-Enabled Presentation (*.pptm)
First a quick demo of the chart:
We are going to build this.
How to Add Developer tab?
- Click on the office button / file menu at the top left in PowerPoint
- Go to Power Point options
- Tick the Show developer tab in the ribbon option in the popup menu
- If you are using PP 2010 or above, go to “Customize ribbon” tab and check the “Developer” ribbon to enable it.
- Close the Power Point options window.
How to add selection pane?
In order to name the chart pictures, we need to use selection pane. You can enable this by
In Office 2013 or above:
- Go to Home > Select and click on Selection Pane.
In Office 2010 or 2007:
- Go to Power Point Options
- Click on Customize
- From left hand side, choose “All commands”
- Scroll down and select “Selection Pane”
- Add this to the quick access toolbar
- Now selection pane will be available on Quick Access Toolbar of PP.
How to Insert & Rename the Developer tab Controls?
- Go to the Developer tab
- To insert a control, simply click on the one you want & then a + cursor should appear
- Use this to drag & create the Control you chose
- As an example for renaming the Control let’s add an Option Button. Which will look like this:
- To rename this to Q1, right click it & select properties
- Then change name & caption as you want.
How to Insert & Rename Images?
The reason you need to rename the images is:
- Easier for identifying chart images when they need to be updated in future
- Uniform VBA code that does not need alteration as all images having same naming convention as that listed in the VBA code
To insert an image:
- Click on the Insert tab and click on Picture
- Then browse to the image you want & click on it & then click OK. Repeat this step if you are creating an animated graph.
- To rename these pictures we just click on the Selection Pane button we added earlier. This will show us all the images & their names in the PowerPoint slide you are on. We can then rename these images to whatever we want. I chose Pic1, Pic2, Pic3, Pic4 as the Chart has a Quarterly data.
- Note that when you are creating dynamic charts, the images will need to be of the same size & must overlap each other. Otherwise it won’t look like a dynamic chart, as it will still do all the work but look out of sync. Example below of Quarterly chart overlap, where Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4 have been placed on top of each other.
VBA code to animate the chart
This VBA code will mainly be used when we have the overlapping image scenario as all we are doing is bringing the image to the front.
The VBA code will also go in the same slide as where the Option Buttons were added.
Since Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4 buttons are in Sheet1. VBA code will be pasted in Sheet1.
- To open the VBA screen Click on the Developer tab & & then on the left hand side menu of the popup
- Write the below code in the white area that shows up
Private Sub OptionButton1_Click()
ActivePresentation.Slides(1).Shapes("Pic1").ZOrder msoBringToFront
End Sub
Private Sub OptionButton2_Click()
ActivePresentation.Slides(1).Shapes("Pic2").ZOrder msoBringToFront
End Sub
Private Sub OptionButton3_Click()
ActivePresentation.Slides(1).Shapes("Pic3").ZOrder msoBringToFront
End Sub
Private Sub OptionButton4_Click()
ActivePresentation.Slides(1).Shapes("Pic4").ZOrder msoBringToFront
End Sub
How this code works?
OptionButton1_Click: Means run the macro when the button is clickedActivePresentation: Means the current PowerPoint file you are using.Slides(1): Means the first slide of that file.Shapes("Pic1"): Means the shape you are referring to. Images are also considered as shapes and as you remember Pic1 is actually the name given to the image of Q1 for the Dynamic graph.ZOrder msoBringToFront: Means bring the shape to the front
Download the Example Presentation
Click here to download the animated charts power point presentation. Play with the animations in slides 2 & 3 to learn more. Examine the VBA code by using Developer ribbon > VBA.
Summary
As you can see, it’s not that difficult to animate charts in PowerPoint. It just requires a workaround in order to do so. I have included few more examples in the downloadable presentation. Check them out and learn more. I hope that this guide is useful to you in animating your PowerPoint files.
Thank you Chirayu
Thank you Chirayu for sharing this awesome technique with us. I really enjoyed playing with the animated charts file.
If you enjoyed this post, Please say thanks to Chirayu.
Want more animated & interactive charts?
If you want to build interactive & animated charts using Excel, check out below examples & case studies:
- “How Trump happened” making animated chart in Excel
- How to create animated charts in Excel – podcast
- Fourth of July fireworks in Excel
- Journey of hurricane Sandy – Interactive Excel chart
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.