This is 4th part of Creating Management Dashboards in Microsoft Excel 6 post series by Robert.
This 6 Part Tutorial on Management Dashboards Teaches YOU:
Creating a Scrollable List View in Dashboard
Add Ability to Sort on Any KPI to the Dashboard
Highlight KPIs Based on Percentile
Add Microcharts to KPI Dashboards
Compare 2 KPIs in the Dashboards Using Form Controls
Show the Distribution of a KPI using Box Plots
The Challenge – Adding Visualization to the KPI Dashboard
In this final post on KPI dashboards with Microsoft Excel, we will show you how to add meaningful graphical visualization directly into our dashboard table. With scrolling, sorting and highlighting the dash-board already offers some interesting analytical features (see previous posts). But it is still displaying the data as pure numbers. That makes it difficult for the user to recognize the relative sizes of the values at a glance. Furthermore it is often necessary to communicate the relative position of the data compared to one or several other calculated or given values like the total average or a target.
The solution
[click here to view larger size]
Inserting conditionally formatted bar-line-combination-charts directly into the dashboard table visualizes the shown data and enables the user to get an overview at a glance. The bars show the relative sizes of the corresponding values, the conditional formatting let us immediately identify which values are below target (red color) or larger than target (grey color) and the line makes it easy to see whether a value is above or below the total average.
Download the Excel file – KPI Dashboards with visualization
The Implementation
To implement the charts, we need some knowledge about creating and formatting special charts with Microsoft Excel. In my humble opinion, the by far best resource on charts with Microsoft Excel is Jon Peltier’s excel charts pages. All you have to know for our dashboard charts is brilliantly described on Jon’s website (follow the links below).
- Prepare the workbook for the new features (5 extra columns on the dashboard for the bar charts, additional rows on the data worksheet to define the targets and new columns on the calculation sheet).
- Insert 5 conditional formatted bar charts. Read Jon’s method to create a conditional formatted chart.
Use the table on the dashboard as the data source for the chart and use the targets defined on the sheet “data” as the threshold whether a value is formatted red (below target) or grey (larger than or equal target).
- Calculate the total average on the calculation sheet for each KPI and add an average line to each of the bar charts by using an XY-scatter chart type. Read more on Bar line combo.The necessary calculations for the steps 2 and 3 can be found in columns Q to AQ of the sheet “calculation”.
- Format the charts to make only the bars and the average line visible (no axes, no grid lines, no data labels, no caption, no border or fill color of chart area and plot area). Like Albert Einstein said: “as simple as possible, but not any simpler.“
- Adjust the charts on the dashboard to make them fit exactly to the corresponding cell ranges. One tip for this: Holding the ALT key pressed when resizing a chart will make the chart size auto-fit to the size of the cell range beneath it. That makes it easier to position the charts correctly.The bar charts already look exactly the way we want them to. But there is one undesirable effect: when scrolling up or down the table, the maximum scale of the horizontal axis changes and the bars seem to “jump” up or down.
To avoid this, add two additional XY-scatter-series to the chart, representing the minimum and the maximum of the total data and assign them to the secondary axis. Furthermore add 2 additional bar series to the chart, again representing the minimum and the maximum of the total data and assign them to the primary axis. We thereby “force” both horizontal axes to be identical and stay the same when scrolling up or down. Since we do not want to display these dummy-series, format them with no line and invisible markers (XY-scatters) respectively with no fill color and no border.
- Finally update the caption beneath the table to explain the meaning of the line and the bar colors.
What is next?
- Download the excel KPI dashboard final workbook
- Bookmark Dashboards using Excel pages for future reference.
- Drop a lovely note of thanks to Robert if you have benefited from this series.
Read the next part: Part 5: Compare 2 Decision Parameters in the Dashboards Using Form Controls
Also, Checkout our Excel Dashboards Page for more examples and resources.
21 Responses to “Distinct count in Excel pivot tables”
The distinct count option works well but I have found that if I have a date field and want to group by year, month, etc. that option seems to be disabled. I need to do both, distinct count and group by year/month.
Example data; sales orders with item quantities with dates.
Challenge; sum the item quantities, count the distinct orders and group by month. How do I do this?
Perhaps that's not possible due to the grouping?
@Al... When you use data model based pivots, you cannot group values manually anymore. Why not use Excel 2016's default date grouping option? In this case we have just a few dates, so Excel is not grouping them, but if you have an year's worth of data, when you make the pivot with date in the row label area, Excel automatically groups them. If you have fewer dates or want to use your own grouping, just create a table with all dates, add columns with month, week, year etc. Then connect this table (these types of tables are usually called as calendar tables) to your data on date field as a relationship. Now you can create reports by month, quarter etc easily.
Is this the only way to do it in 2013? I find it rather cumbersome to have to create another data table listing dates with the another column for MONTH() and YEAR() to be able to summarise data for senior level...
I know people find adding calendar tables cumbersome, but it is a best practice and let's you add more layers of analysis quite easily. For example, adding analysis by weekday vs. weekend or by financial quarter or YTD calculations (you would need either Power Pivot DAX or some very carefully setup pivot table value field settings)
I had absolutely no idea this was possible. Very useful, nice work!
Doesn't work for 2010 version though (or at least not my works version)
Hi ,
The post has the following in it :
These instructions work only in Excel 2016, Office 365 and Excel 2013.
when i have 2 different Pivot tables, one without the enabled “Add this data to data model” option, and the other one with it enabled.. is there anyway i can link slicers between them?
if the answer is NO,, what to do ?
Quick note, the “Add this data to data model” option is not available for the Mac version.
perhaps outside scope of this article but I have found when I attempt to create a pivot table from an external data source (connection to a sql view) the "Add this data to data model" becomes greyed out. Anybody experienced and found a solution so I can start getting distinct count in my pivot tables?
Is there a way to still add a calculated field when using distinct count?
I found I can't change the date source after tick the " add this data to the data model", can you help to adv how to change the date source in such case?
Is there a way to update the source once you have added to the data model? I receive a new spreadsheet weekly and would like to update the connection so my tables pull from the new source.
Hi Crhis, I like how you have hulk (superhero) as your avatar. Do you know that there is a superhero in Excel too? It's Power Query. You can use it to solve your problem in a simple click. Here an intro if you need some guidance.
Powerful Introduction to Power Query
A big Thank you. It worked.
Hi, have survey data that I need to analyze but the challenge is that my key fields are showing horizontally. I tried to transpose the fields using Power Query, but unfortunately the new fields are returning same values on a pivot table despite using distinct values
How I can a do a pivot table with discount conts in some columns and then generate shor report filter pages. pls it drives crazy
Hi. Why grand total pivot of distinct count is 13? shouldn't it be 67?
Great Answer! Saved me lots of time!
Thank you!!!
Worked awesome! Thanks!!
Hi Chandoo,
I am using pivot tables for distinct count and now I need to update them with new set of data. But when I update the source data, all the columns and formatting of Pivot table disappears and I need to build it from Scratch.
Is there a possibility that I can update the source data with new rows added and also retain my pivot tables?