First some good news,
On 21st November, 2010, our little blog received its 10,000th comment!
Thank you so much for making this happen.
Those of you reading chandoo.org for a while know my penchant for comments. I have learned a lot of excel tips & ideas just by reading the comments you posted on this blog. I think comments are one of the best parts of this blog. So, naturally, I wanted to celebrate this milestone, with something big & awesome.
My intention was to download all the 10,000+ comments and play with the data to come up with something outstanding, like a dashboard. It took me 2 days to conceptualize and create this beauty.
10,007 comments visualized in an Excel Dashboard:
[click here for a larger version]
Summary of Findings from the Dashboard:
- Out of 10,007 comments, 8766 are comments left by people and 1241 are ping-backs (a comment made automatically by other blogs when they link to chandoo.org).
- Roughly 20% of comments are @ replies.
- 31 posts had more than 50 comments each. The maximum comments were 313 on the last visible cell poll.
- These 10,007 comments came from 2507 unique people. Top 20 commenters made 28% of comments.
- Median words per comment are 33. You said a total of 485,000 words so far. Impressive.
- There were only 5 days with zero comments in 2010 (as against 66 in 2008 and 15 in 2009).
- Fridays are most popular days for commenting with 20% comments coming in.
Learn How Dashboard is Constructed in a Crash Course:
I made this dashboard with lots of love & coffee. Of course, coffee wont magically turn data into in-cell charts. We need to arm twist our data and get the insights out ourselves.
That is why I made an hour long tutorial explaining how I constructed this dashboard. In the video I explain how I came up with the design, what formulas I used to cleanse & process the data, how various charts were constructed, what techniques I have used to put this together.
As this video is kind of advanced training on dashboards, I have decided to sell it. You can get a copy of the video & unlocked excel files for $37.
What you get with the purchase:
- A HD video explaining the dashboard construction process
- Same video in iPod compatible format for watching on the go.
- 2 Excel files, the original version & instructor version (unlocked)
Please note: You will not enjoy the video if you are an Excel beginner. Instead go thru Excel Dashboards page to equip yourself with necessary dashboard & charting skills before getting a training like this.
How is this Dashboard Made?
If you are curious to know which nuts & bolts are used in the dashboard, read up:
- The chart showing monthly trend of comments and day of week distribution are 2 different charts, one arranged on top of other.
- The word cloud showing relative frequencies of words used in comments is made using wordle. This is the only non-native Excel part of the dashboard.
- The Top 10 tables at the bottom are incell charts with some fancy colors.
- I have used pivot tables, SUMPRODUCT, SUMIFS, INDEX+MATCH, VLOOKUP formulas to process the data.
- Word counts are generated by processing the comment text using this technique.
Download the Dashboard File:
Click here to download a locked copy of the dashboard [mirror here]. You can examine the dashboard, but you can not alter it as it is password protected.
If you want an unlocked copy, you can get it by purchasing the video tutorial. Click here (or here).
A Big Thank You
A big, warm, cuddly thanks to you for making 10,000 comments. Everyday, your comments teach me new tricks on Excel & make me better at what I do. I am sure you feel the same about others comments.
Special thanks to top commenters – Jon Peltier (228), Hui (186), Jeff Weir (148), Robert (138), Jimmy (62), Rick Rothstein (60), Martin (58), Daniel Ferry (54), Dan l (53). Also, kudos to Stef@n for leaving a 900 word comment, the longest ever.
How do you like the dashboard?
Do you like the dashboard? Do you find it insightful? What modifications you would have made to it? Go ahead and share your ideas and tips with us. Please leave a comment.
PS: And get a copy of the training video if you work with dashboards a lot. I am sure you can pick up few tricks to become even more awesome.
28 Responses to “Pimp your comment boxes [because it is Friday]”
This borders on Excel soft-cell...er, soft-core...porn. My favorite kind.
Wow, that is pimp-TASTIC! I have a question, as a VBA n00b: additional comment boxes stay plain unless I "run" the macro. Is there a way to change all comments, going-forward?
hi Chandoo, well, I like the macro approach. For those who don't like it, there is another way: just add the "draw" toolbar to the shapes toolbar (via Custom etc), click on "edit comment", click on the auto-shape and then choose "draw" drop-down, --> modify auto-shape --> then you even can have a heart or a banner (I like the horizontal banner in in purple :-)) . in excel 2007, you have to add this custom menu that you choose via Excel Options --> Custom --> it is called "change/ modify auto-shape"!!!
best,
@Chandoo. Great Post 🙂
@Tim : the way the macro is coded, it must be run very time.
@Community: If someone has an idea to perform it when opening an existing excel, it should be nice.
@Community: if someone has some code to revamp the commentboxes on all sheets, please share it. 🙂
@Microsoft Excel-progammers: some pimpoptions for the commentboxes should be great.
Cheerio
Tom
For the auto run, please add the codes in workbook:
Private Sub Workbook_SheetActivate(ByVal Sh As Object)
Call Comments_Tom
End Sub
Wow, that was a lot of fun... Thanks Tom!
@Jeff... Now, 5000 people know about your favorite porn... 😛
@Tim ... you can write an event to handle the new comments. I wouldnt recommend it as it is really painful. another option is to use the macro suggested by Yukikomi. It will update comments everytime you activate the sheet.
@laguerriere: very cool 🙂
@Chandoo ... Thanks! This is good stuff. I combined your tip with a tip from Mark O'Brien, then assigned it to a button on Excel 2010's Quick Access Toolbar, to format comments AS I add them. I also like how Mark's code saves me the trouble of backspacing my name out of new comments:
Sub AppendToExistingComment()
'Source: Mark O'Brien at http://www.mrexcel.com/forum/showthread.php?t=57296
Dim oRange As Range
Dim oComment As Comment
Dim sText As String
'Use object variable to hold range.
Set oRange = ActiveCell
'Use object variable for comment
Set oComment = oRange.Comment
'text to be added to the comment box
sText = InputBox("Type text to be added:", "APPEND TO COMMENT TEXT")
If Len(sText) = 0 Then End
'If Active Cell has a comment then append new text to the end of the comment text
If Not oComment Is Nothing Then
sText = oComment.Text & vbNewLine & sText
oRange.Comment.Delete
End If
'Add a comment with the contents of sText
oRange.AddComment sText
DoEvents
Comments_Tom
End Sub
Thank you very much for the code, it seems to be working for the most part; I am having a problem however. Once the routine makes the corrections to the comment, the comment becomes invisible. By invisible, I mean that when I highlight my mouse over it, nothing appears. However, when I right click the cell and click 'edit comment' then the comment becomes visible and I enter edit mode. Upon clicking out of the comment, it simply vanishes again. I've tried to fix this problem by adding a .shape.visible = msoTrue but then every comment is always visible. o_O please advise...
Thank you,
Nick
@Nick- That is because the font color of the comment is white and when you select the color of selection is also white hence you can not see anything. Try to change the color code in the routine to something else. would work
Thanks for that! The code works perfectly!
[...] look at Format Excel Comment Boxes using VBA Macros | Chandoo.org - Learn Microsoft Excel Online [...]
@ Chandoo - code works great and the comments look super cool. But I have ran into a small issue. In the comments, I am inserting pictures. When I run the macro, for all comments which already have pictures; pictures are deleted. Pls help me retain the pics in comments.
[…] posted some code one of his readers submitted, it "pimps" your comment boxes from those boring black-text-on-yellow rectangles to something more professional and eye-pleasing. […]
love in it
Hi Tom,
This looks really excellent. I am however relatively new to macros / VBA codes so having copy pasted your code in the Developer mode of an Excel file, what are the next steps to use them? Can you please help? Just to recap, I opened a blank Excel workbook, clicked on Developer, copy pasted the comments code and saved the file to the desktop.
Now how do I go about using it to add comments to an existing file? My apologies for asking a question which may be basic to you great geniuses, but I am not there yet and aspire to get there.
Many thanks for helping me with next steps that I need to take so that I can now use the code.
Best Wishes
Deepak Dave, CMA, MBA, PMP
Senior Management Consultant
Dear Dave,
The best thing to do is to copy the macro in the personal.xls(x) file. The personal excel file will always be launched when you open excel so you can use it with every excelworkbook.
Read all about it on the page of Microsoft.
https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Copy-your-macros-to-a-Personal-Macro-Workbook-aa439b90-f836-4381-97f0-6e4c3f5ee566
Once you have the macro in the personal, you can 'call' the macro by the keyboardcombination 'alt+f8' and klik on the macroname.
Hope this clarifies the 'how to'. Good luck with your first steps in the wonderfull world of macro's.
Tom
Hi Tom,
Many thanks. I will try that out. Learning is fun and learning this stuff is even more amazing.
Best Wishes
Deepak Dave
There is a line 'Dim LArea As Long' which does not appear to be used. Have I missed something?
Dear Gary,
Correct the 'Dim LArea As Long' is indeed not relevant and can be deleted.
Tom
Excellent hack!
For some reason when I opened my file after using LibreOffice Calc, all comment boxes had changed to some arrow shape.
So this macro helped me from manually changing more than 5000 comments in a worksheet, or having to install some Excel extension.
I used it with the following attributes to get back old style comments:
It helped me from manually changing more than 5000 comments in a worksheet, or having to install some Excel extension.
.Shape.AutoShapeType = msoShapeRectangle
.Shape.TextFrame.Characters.Font.Name = "Calibri"
.Shape.TextFrame.Characters.Font.Size = 10
.Shape.TextFrame.AutoMargins = True
.Shape.TextFrame.AutoSize = True
Thanks a lot!
This was helpful, thank you
I think this is among the most significant
information for me. And i am glad reading your article.
But wanna remark on some general things, The site style is great,
the articles is really great : D. Good job, cheers
Is there code to add to this that will format a particular part of the comment (i.e. make the last sentence in the comment bold and in italics)?
This is fantastic!
How would I add auto-sizing to it?
I tried adding this:
.Shape.AutoSize = True but it gives me an error and as a novice at VBA I can't figure it out.
.Shape.TextFrame.AutoSize = True
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This is GREAT!
How should the code be changed in order to tun once for all worksheets in a workbook?