Let’s say you made a chart to show actual and forecast values. By default, both values look in same color. But we would like to separate forecast values by showing them in another color.
If you are a seasoned Excel user, you may be thinking, “Oh, that’s easy. I will just create 2 sets of data (one for actual and one for forecast), make a chart from them and apply separate colors.”
But here is a really simple way to get the same effect.
Use a semi-transparent box to mask the forecast values. The end result is shown below.
Here is how the trick works:
- Create the chart from all values.
- Draw a rectangle (box) shape on your spreadsheet.
- Fill it with white color and remove outline (set the outline color to no line).
- Select the box, Go to Fill > more colors and set it to 50% transparent.
- Place the box on top of chart, adjust its size and position to overlap the forecast data.
- Your forecast looks in a different color!
See below demo to understand the process:
Learn more about forecasting
If your work involves trend analysis & forecasting, check out below resources:
- Introduction to trend analysis in Excel – podcast
- Doing trend analysis & forecasting in Excel – 3 part series
- How to highlight best months & weeks in charts
How do you highlight your forecasts?
My personal favorite is to use dotted lines to separate forecasts. This involves either using Excel’s chart trendline option or adding a dummy series thru formulas to show the forecast line. When I am in a hurry, I usually add a semi-transparent mask to set aside the forecast values.
What about you? How do you highlight forecast values in your charts? Please post your technique in the comments area.
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