Happy Diwali for all our readers – Animated Flower Pot Cracker in Excel for you…

Today is Diwali, the festival of lights. I wish you and your family a happy, bright and prosperous festive time. May your house shower with lots of light, laughter and love.

Diwali is one of my favorite festivals. It is a time when all family members get together, eat delicious food, laugh to hearts content and light up diyas (small oil lamps) to celebrate the victory of good over evil. This year, my kids (who are 6 yrs btw) are very excited about the festival. They are looking forward to lighting up diyas and crackers (fire works).

To celebrate the holiday, I made something for you.

An animated flower pot firework in Excel.

Here is a quick demo:

Download the flower pot chart

Click here to download the flower pot cracker chart. Click on the flower pot (triangle) to light up the fireworks.

How is this made?

Let’s keep it brief, after all, it’s festival time and I can’t sit in front of computer all day.

Flower pot:

• The flower pot sprinkles fire in parabolic shape.
• So we make 10 parabolas going to right and 10 to left (using the equation y=ax² + bx + c)
• The parabolas stop midway because the fire dies. So we stop when y reaches RANDBETWEEN(30,90)% of maximum y.
• We then plot these 20 equations using XY scatter plot and color the lines differently.
• Using a simple VBA script, we increase the X value from o to 89 and feed the XY values to chart one step at a time
• This creates the flower pot fire cracker effect.

Tinkling diya:

• We make a single column bar chart and use light wick shape to fill the column
• We then increase the column height from 100 to 110 and then back to 100 in a loop
• This creates the effect of light going up and down, a la tinkling diya.

For more, check out the downloadable workbook, examine the hidden calc worksheet and code in module1.

Want to create such animated charts – Read on

Animation is a powerful way to attract user attention. Check out these pages to learn more.

• Another Diwali animated chart in Excel
• Journey of Hurricane Sandy – Animated Chart
• 3D Dancing pendulums using Excel Charts & VBA
• Designing a clock using Excel
• Animation with out macros [for fun]

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If you want to learn more about animation & other VBA techniques, consider joining our online VBA classes. In a few weeks, you can master all aspects of Excel VBA & Macros.

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