This year has been busiest year since inception of Chandoo.org. Wow, that is 10 years in a row of breaking previous records.
We had 101 posts, 7,400+ comments this year. Since our forum went thru a migration, I could not gather exact stats for forum. We have trained more than 2,500 people thru my online classes – Excel School, VBA Classes & Power Pivot classes.
More than 7.5 million people visited our site in last 1 year (up 14%) and consumed a whopping 20 million pages (up 16%). Each of these visitors spent an average of 2 minutes 21 seconds on our site becoming awesome in Excel. There are 1.8 million people who spent at least 15 minutes on our site.
We have added more than 25,000 members to our newsletter / RSS reader community, crossing 80,000 mark. It is a busy year.

Top 10 posts written in 2013
Top 10 formulas for analysts [Visitors: 65,638]
Employee vacation tracker [Visitors: 42,659]
Interactive chart in Excel – How to make it? [Visitors: 42,416]
Angry Formulas game… [Visitors: 36,392]
Learn top 10 Excel features [Visitors: 25,723]
To-do list with priorities – Excel templates [Visitors: 19,947]
Introduction to Power Pivot [Visitors: 21,298]
Best new features in Excel 2013 [Visitors: 21,539]
How to create interactive calendar in Excel? [Visitors: 17,478]
5 Keyboard shortcuts for writing better formulas [Visitors: 18,577]
Honorable mentions
How to create a then vs. now interactive chart? [Visitors: 16,711]
Shaded line charts in Excel [Visitors: 17,397]
INDEX formula usage, tips and tricks [Visitors: 16,280]
Rules for making awesome column charts [Visitors: 11,863]
Top 10 pages in Chandoo.org – 2013
As you can guess, a lot of people visit articles and pages that are not necessarily published in 2013. Here is a lit of most visited pages in our site in 2013.
Chandoo.org home page [Visitors: 559,208]
Excel Dashboards – Information, examples & tutorials [Visitors: 386,066]
Excel Pivot Tables Tutorial [Visitors: 487,794]
Project Management using Excel – Information, examples & tutorials [Visitors: 243,186]
Free Excel Templates for download [Visitors: 266,153]
Advanced Excel Skills [Visitors: 179,702]
VBA & Excel Macro Examples [Visitors: 132,938]
Excel Formulas home page [Visitors: 109,743]
Delete Blank Rows in Excel [Visitors: 198,543]
Excel Formulas Are Not Working [Visitors: 200,254]
Honorable mentions
Excel School online training program [Visitors: 163,952]
Between Formula Excel [Visitors: 181,539]
Chandoo.org forum [Visitors: 83,264]
Excel Sumproduct Formula [Visitors: 158,830]
Key trends this year
This year our main themes were,
- Making more people awesome in Excel, Dashboards, Power Pivot & VBA
- Teaching new ways of writing formulas to thru Formula Forensics & Formula Challenges series
- Meeting more of our readers face to face thru live classes in USA & Malaysia.
- Engaging our Facebook fans thru exclusive content
- Having lots of fun, playfulness and curiosity all the while.
Which posts did you enjoy most this year?
I hope you had a busy and fruitful year. Go ahead and tell us which posts, tips & articles you enjoyed most in 2013 using comments. And oh yea, wishing you a happy new year!














27 Responses to “9 Box grid for talent mapping – HR for Excel – Template & Explanation”
Great stuff! I can understand how to add a slicer to the pivot table, but how do you implement the departmental selector on the 'Filter' formula scheme?
Just saw this on your Youtube channel, and it’s areat idea...!
An easy way to overcome the "ugliness" of pivot tables and get it to look nice (in the format of the Output sheet), would be to simply build a sheet with the nice map at the top, a pivot underneath it and a slicer next to formatted map and then reference each of the 9 cells in the formatted map to the “related” cell in the Pivot.
Keep up the good work!
/Claus
Thanks Claus. That is a great idea 🙂
Hi Chandoo,
This is great! Curious how to make additional columns operate the same as the Department column (ex. have a "manager column") that would allow you to sort a 9 box by manager, area, or team in addition to department?
Feel free to email me if needed! mfry01@minnetronixmedical.com
Happy New Year
Madison Fry
I am curious about the smae thing. I would like to populate the 9 box with other views as well by adding additional columns. IE., I would like to add location, region, etc. Thank you.
This is great, thank you!
How can i see the whole data set of all the teams in the output table. Need a formula that will pick up all the employees
Hello,
Love the template. Thank you. Question - the drop down to pick a department on the Output tab does not seem to work on the downloadable template. Am I doing something incorrectly?
Thank you!
Hi Heather... Thank you. I am using Excel 365 to make the calculations. If you are using an older version of Excel, then the drop-down filter won't work.
Hi
I was able to follow your 9 box grid and modified based my needs. However, you tutorial did not show how to you create the filter for the "Pick a department. Can you kindly share how to create that filter that updated the grid. Thank you.
I am working on this project but I am struggling with the data validation for the department. I copy the worksheets data entry and output as the managers want to see different tabs for each managers.
I updated the source reference for each tab but It does not update the grid based on the new source. The list was updated but it does not populate the grid based on the performance and potential listed.
In addition the hyperlink Update Data and View Talent Map no longer works. Can you please help me.
I keep getting this error message in the pivot table:
This formula is invalid or incomplete: 'The expression is not valid or appears to be incomplete. Please review and correct the expression.
The following syntax error occurred during parsing: Invalid token, Line 1, Offset 14, ‘.
Hi, I used your 9-box excel template with excel 365. First off, thank you so very much. It is incredibly helpful!! My only question is that the boxes aren't big enough for all of the employees (specifically the middle which we call 'Core Employee'). Is there a way to make the boxes larger? Even though it is in excel, I am not able to increase row height (like I normally do in a speadsheet). Any ideas? Thanks again, Jody
Hi Chandoo,
Thanks for the great content. Re. 9 box grid, pls advise how do I increase the size of the box to accommodate more names?
Hi Chandoo,
I figured it out. Excel 365 has the format row height on the ribbon. Thank you
Merci Chandoo pour le modèle proposé,
j'ai une question et un souhait est il possible de développer davantage ce modèle en insérant la photo de chaque employé.
Hi Chandoo!
Great tutorial and tool, thank you! Your tutorial didn't include how to create additional filters on the "Output" tab. Could you please share how you did it?
Can this be done exactly in google sheets?
Hi Chandoo,
Thanks for the video it was really helpful. Is there any way to multi select the dropdown to display multiple or all departments rather than just one at once?
Hello Prish
I have Microsoft 365 and I am struggling to make the boxes larger/unable to increase row height; any idea how you made this work? Specifically in the Output tab where the map is?
Many thanks
Hello Jody, I have Microsoft 365 and I am struggling to make the boxes larger/unable to increase row height; any idea how you made this work? Specifically in the Output tab where the map is? Many thanks
Is there a way to change the 9 box wording descriptions, i.e. Work Horses, to our own internal langauge?
You can edit the file. The descriptions are textboxes.
Hi Chandoo, this is awesome and has worked perfectly. Due to a big organisation the 9 box grid on the output file is too small. I tried adjusting using the row/width ribbon under the format ribbon however it doesn't seem to work. Is there an easier way to adjust this?
Thanks!
When I drag the formula, it doesn't work, and the order I use with the data changes. In the beginning, the order is it is " candidates," " potential," and " performance," but when it goes to another column, it is " Potential," Performance," and "Candidates."Can you help me? Thank you very much, sending love from vietnam
Hi- I am working on the 9 grid project and I am trying to expand the box since I have over 100 names on a few of the columns. How do I do that?
Hi, Thank you this is great stuff and really useful.
As well as department as demonstrated on your clip, how can I display all candidates on the grid at once?
Many thanks in advance