How to create animated charts in Power Point [VBA]

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This is a guest post by Chirayua 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.

animated-power-point-chart-demo

How to Add Developer tab?

  1. Click on the office button / file menu at the top left in PowerPoint
  2. Go to Power Point options
  3. Tick the Show developer tab in the ribbon option in the popup menu
    1. If you are using PP 2010 or above, go to “Customize ribbon” tab and check the “Developer” ribbon to enable it.
  4. 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?

  1. Go to the Developer tab
  2. To insert a control, simply click on the one you want & then a + cursor should appear
  3. Use this to drag & create the Control you chose
  4. As an example for renaming the Control let’s add an Option Button. Which will look like this:option-button-power-point
  5. To rename this to Q1, right click it & select properties
  6. Then change name & caption as you want.

option-button-properties

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:

  1. Click on the Insert tab and click on Picture
  2. Then browse to the image you want & click on it & then click OK. Repeat this step if you are creating an animated graph.
  3. 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.
  4. 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.

center-aligned-chart-images

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 clicked
  • ActivePresentation: 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:

 

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23 Responses to “Shift Calendar Template – FREE Download”

  1. Alvin says:

    Hi Chandoo,

    your recent postings include only Excel 2007 templates. Unfortunately the company I work at still runs Excel 2003. Is it possible to get your awesome files in other excel version as well?

    Thanks so much for your great excel stuff!

  2. Stelios Tserkezis says:

    Is it possible to do this for shifts with hours instead of days? To organise a three shift day?

    Thanks in advance,

    Stelios

  3. MASTHAN says:

    In my organization there are 45 employees i need split then into three shifts ex:A shift:14,B shift:14,C shift:14 and week off:3 kindly help me on this.

  4. Hui... says:

    @Masthan

    You need to understand what rules your company has for the various shifts / roster combinations

  5. Georges Lacombe says:

    Chandoo, I once did a shift control spreadsheet for my team. I put one person in each line, the columns were the days. I put a shift code in each cell indicating in which shift that person should work, or if the person were out that day. I have two codes for being out. One is for vacations and one is to compensate days worked in weekends. This way I was able to count how many persons I have in each shift, how many were on vacations and how many were out compensating (that's the term we use here) weekend worked hours.
    Later I included the possibility of a person be in two lines one for normal hours other for overtime. This is mainly used for planning purposes. If you would like I can send you an example. The only problem of this spreadsheet is that we don't have a person view, only this consolidated view.

    • Chuck Vaughan says:

      Hi George, I would like to have a copy of your spreadsheet if you can share it.
       
      Thanks in advance, Chuck   

  6. Idan says:

    Hi Chandoo,

    Where is the code located ? is it VBA ? If so , how do you hide it ? Or it is .NET ?

    Thx

  7. Hui... says:

    @Idan
    .
    No VBA or code, it is all done with Mirrors.
    Only Joking,
    .
    But there is no VBA or code,
    It is all done with Named Formulas and Lookups.
    Have alook at the cells in the calander area and Named Formulas in the Formulas, Name Manager Tab.

  8. Anand Sant says:

    How can i calculate between two or more different workbooks? Please, reply me as early as possible.

    • Hui... says:

      @Anand
      Open the workbooks you want to link to
      Start a formula = and click and change between workbooks as required.
      You can use the View, Switch window menu to change workbooks mid formula

      The format for using workbooks is
      =[Workbook.xlsm]Sheet1!$A$1
      or
      =SUM('[Book2.xls]Sheet1'!$A$1:$D$10)
      etc

  9. Shemi says:

    Hi Chandoo,
    I am working with a call centre wherein i ned to update at the month end 20 to 30 employees login hours which are defict to track it at the month end is very difficult is there any template which can be made to track that why on a particular day a guy who needs to be on calls was why not on calls.

  10. Denice Lognshaw says:

    Thank you so much Chandoo. This is really helping me. As usual, you rock.

  11. Mukesh Verma says:

    What's FortyTwoDays and Calendar in Name manager?

    Both are unused and FortyTwoDays doesn't make any sense.

  12. Dave says:

    I have a SQL db that contains records of events scheduled/completed on a particular date. Can this method ous building a calendar be used to display those events on the respective day?

  13. Jan Halliday says:

    Positively awesome!
    I'm attempting to help a friend create a schedule for adult classes - and of course its not"paid help".  Here is the scenario:
    20 classes, instructor, room#, student class size, start date, number of class days (need to subtract weekends)

    class
    instructor
    room
    students
    start
    #days

    PATH
    karen
    201
    21
    01/01/13
    11

    BILLING
    jane
    401
    15
    01/12/13
    13

    MEDISOFT
    mike
    301
    11
    01/25/13
    9

    he'd like to see these classes show up in different colors within the same month's calendar chart.  He can draw it, but I'd like to see it done automatically through data, and I just can't visualize it, but I KNOW this will work - can you help?
    Jan 🙂
     

  14. Chan Tean says:

    Dear chandoo,

    Try many way to download still can't access. Any way we want to try out 3 shifts with 3 guys in a group .eg Group A Morn, Group B Night and Group C Rest. And every each group must work on sunday to take turns. In fact we are security teams so that's why sunday is required to work. Pls guide and show how to put in the working calendar. Thank you in advance.

  15. Veronica Burggren says:

    I've been trying to copy and/or recreate this to use in a workbook I'm doing for the transportation department I'm working for. I need to have the calendar on the first sheet in my document (it has graph's from data on another sheet). I'm trying to use it to track (with the conditional formatting) accidents and injuries. I've redone the conditional formatting to do 4 different accident types (no injury, near miss, OSHA recordable injury and work loss injury), but when I enter the formula's you have in the calendar portion where it says "DateOfFirst-FirstWeekDay" I can't figure out how you did that. Are you able to help?

  16. Pipin Fantom says:

    I would like to use Excel to solve the following problem for a community work. I want to create a Driver schedule for a given month from a pool of volunteers for a community service. Each of these volunteers can drive only on specific days in a week. I would like to populate the driving schedule for each weekday with primary, secondary and tertiary drivers in a random fashion so that I do not overburden one person. I would greatly any help you can provide.

  17. Ravichandra says:

    Hi chandoo,
    Thanks for your valuable effort for create this template and let me know how to add multiple employees in the the Roaster.

  18. Savitha says:

    Hi Chandoo,

    This article on shift roaster is very helpful. Could you please let me know how i can use the same for n number of resources who work 24/7, considering their leaves and holidays?

    Thanks,
    Savitha

  19. Balu says:

    Hi Chandoo,

    This article on shift roaster is very helpful to all. Could you please let me know how i can use the same if I want to add for some more shifts, since the color is not getting change if I add more shifts like 4,5 etc.,

    Thanks,
    Murali

  20. Sarah says:

    How can I change the date to 2017 under Shift Data worksheet.

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