Earlier in the week Chandoo presented Give more details by showing average and distribution
At the top of the post was a small screen capture from Amazon.com showing a 5 Star chart showing that Twilight had a 3.5 Star Rating (way over-rated if you ask me).
I received an email shortly afterwards from Rajiv, “How can I make one of those charts ? ” with the Stars Circled
It’s actually very simple and this post will show you how.
The Technique
The technique involves putting a mask in front of a single bar from a Bar Chart
The mask has a plain background and has cut-outs where the Stars are, which are transparent and so only the bar chart shows through in those areas which are cut out.
Lets Do It
On a worksheet we need a cell where we have a Rating Value, lets use B2
Make the value in Cell B2, 5
Select the cell B2 and Insert Chart
Insert a Bar Chart (Clustered Bar)
Delete the following chart objects
- Title
- Legend
- Major Grid Lines
Select the Horizontal Axis
Format Axis
Change the Horizontal Axis Scale to
- Minimum 0
- Maximum 5
Delete the Horizontal and Vertical Axis
Move the chart and resize the Bar to your requirements
Change the Bar’s Fill to suit
Set Border color to No Color
Insert Picture
Import the 5 Star mask attached here
Position the mask in front of the charts Bar
With the mask selected shift the Right hand side and then left hand side so that you can just see the edges of the bar.
Check the placement by trying the numbers from 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 0.1 in B2
You should see all the stars perfectly when the placement is correct
Select the Chart and 5 Star Mask together
Use Shift while selecting each one
Group the Chart and Mask together, so that they can’t be moved
Your are free to shift and resize this combined object on your worksheet as required
Vertical Charts
A Similar technique can be used for Vertical Charts using a Column Chart instead of a Bar Chart
Masks
The masks used here were made in CorelDRAW, but can be made in any Drawing/Paint program like Paint.NET, that allows you to save PNG’s with Transparency effects
The masks consists of:
- 5 Stars which have no outline color and are transparent
- 1 Rectangle which is White with no Outline color
The 6 objects are then Joined enabling the holes of the Stars to show through the White Rectangle
Using this technique any shape can be used as a mask
I have included the following masks for you to practice with or use:
5 Stars Mask with Outlined Stars,
If anybody knows how to join objects together in Excel to make holes through them as required here, Please let us know in the comments below:
Thermometer Charts
The above technique is great for application to Thermometer Charts, where the Thermometer can take on all values from 0 to 100% or 0 to $200,000
or whatever you require.
Files
All the above examples are shown in one file which you can download here or here for the 2003 Version
Download the Waves and Chameleon 2007 or Waves and Chameleon 2003 examples
Extensions of the Technique
This technique can be extended in a number of areas
The Thermometer chart above shows one such area
The other is applying multiple Masks to multiple Bars/Columns in one chart, But I’ll leave you to practice that.
Limitations of the Technique
Two main limitations of this technique are:
Scaling
As Excel charts are scaled, Excel internally decides what space should be between the Plot Area, Titles and the edge of the Chart Area. This is not maintained constantly and hence the Plot Area may scale at a different ratio to the Chart area and overlying mask.
If this happens Ungroup the Chart and mask and reset ecverything at the new size.
Mask Color
The mask has a Fixed color, in the above examples it is white.
The mask cannot be colored in Excel to Match the background color of the Worksheet if it isn’t white.
So a new Mask will need to be made.
What Do you Think of this Technique
What Do you Think of this Technique?
How else can you see this technique being extended?
Let us know in the comments below:
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
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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?