One of the annoyances of charts is that they all look like boxes (except for pie charts, they just look wrong). Boxes might be ok when you are making 1 or 2 charts. But a whole dashboard of boxes can look little rigid. So how can we make the charts peppy without loosing any effect? Like these charts below:
![Use Shapes and Images make Prettier Charts [Dashboard Tricks]](https://chandoo.org/img/c/pretty-charts-with-shapes.png)
Very simple, we use drawing shapes in MS Excel to draw whatever we want and overlay the chart on top.
See this 3 step tutorial.
Step 1: Make the chart
This is simple, just make the chart and remove the background color. Also adjust series colors so that they look good when you combine the chart with drawing shape.
Step 2: Make the drawing
Go to Insert > Shapes (in excel 2003, select drawing toolbar and draw a shape) and insert some shapes. Arrange them so that you get desired effect.
Step 3: Put Chart on top of Drawing
This is simple. Just drag the chart on to the shape (s). If needed “send shapes to background”. That is all.
Download Example Charts
Click on these links to download example charts – Excel 2007 | Excel 2003
There are millions of possibilities when using shapes. Try something new for your next dashboard or report.
Note: Shapes can add clutter if you overdo them. Remember, the purpose is to let readers focus on the chart, not on shapes.
Additional material on excel dashboards.
6 Responses to “Make VBA String Comparisons Case In-sensitive [Quick Tip]”
Another way to test if Target.Value equal a string constant without regard to letter casing is to use the StrCmp function...
If StrComp("yes", Target.Value, vbTextCompare) = 0 Then
' Do something
End If
That's a cool way to compare. i just converted my values to strings and used the above code to compare. worked nicely
Thanks!
In case that option just needs to be used for a single comparison, you could use
If InStr(1, "yes", Target.Value, vbTextCompare) Then
'do something
End If
as well.
Nice tip, thanks! I never even thought to think there might be an easier way.
Regarding Chronology of VB in general, the Option Compare pragma appears at the very beginning of VB, way before classes and objects arrive (with VB6 - around 2000).
Today StrComp() and InStr() function offers a more local way to compare, fully object, thus more consistent with object programming (even if VB is still interpreted).
My only question here is : "what if you want to binary compare locally with re-entering functions or concurrency (with events) ?". This will lead to a real nightmare and probably a big nasty mess to debug.
By the way, congrats for you Millions/month visits 🙂
This is nice article.
I used these examples to help my understanding. Even Instr is similar to Find but it can be case sensitive and also case insensitive.
Hope the examples below help.
Public Sub CaseSensitive2()
If InStr(1, "Look in this string", "look", vbBinaryCompare) = 0 Then
MsgBox "woops, no match"
Else
MsgBox "at least one match"
End If
End Sub
Public Sub CaseSensitive()
If InStr("Look in this string", "look") = 0 Then
MsgBox "woops, no match"
Else
MsgBox "at least one match"
End If
End Sub
Public Sub NotCaseSensitive()
'doing alot of case insensitive searching and whatnot, you can put Option Compare Text
If InStr(1, "Look in this string", "look", vbTextCompare) = 0 Then
MsgBox "woops, no match"
Else
MsgBox "at least one match"
End If
End Sub