As mentioned earlier, I have conducted a small interview with Charley Kyd – an Excel MVP, author of four books and 50+ articles for various national media, owner of exceluser.com and creator of popular products like plug-n-play excel dashboard kit. He sent me the answers almost a week back, but I could push the interview only today due to my travel and settling down stuff. As expected the interview is very entertaining and useful. I hope you like this.
Q: What are your 3 favorite formulas?
I don’t have favorite formulas, but here are three functions I use all the time:
- INDEX
- MATCH (with the third argument equal to zero)
- SUMPRODUCT
Q: If I am an excel newbie, what three books or resources you would recommend?
MrExcel.com forum for asking questions
Check out Microsoft discussion groups and microsoft.public.excel newsgroup for asking questions
Q: How can managers and analysts be more productive in using excel?
- Don’t upgrade to Excel 2007, or, if you do, keep a copy of Excel 2003 on your computer. (When you install 2007 on top of 2003, answer No when the install program asks if you want to upgrade to the new version.)
- Wherever possible, separate your data from your presentation, then use formulas to pull your data into your presentation. (My three “favorite” functions help you to do that.)
- Learn shortcut keys. In versions prior to Excel 2007, the Alt key commands are consistent. And 2007, allows you to use the earlier versions’ Alt-key combinations for many things.
Q: What resources (books, websites) would you recommend for this type of people?
I’ll be talking more about separating data and presentation at ExcelUser.com over the coming year. Subscribe to my newsletter to be alerted about developments.
Q: Do you think a small business owner run her shop using excel and few free tools ? What you suggest her?
Yes and no. I would not recommend that you use Excel for accounting. Quicken is really inexpensive and does a much better job. But Excel can help in many other ways, including analysis, forecasting, pricing, and so on.
Q: Where do you think most of us waste a lot of time while using excel ?
- Importing data from other systems / sources?
We perform the same reporting or analytical task over and over again, but with different data. When you notice yourself doing this, try to come up with ways that you can use formulas in one workbook to pull the data you need from a data workbook. That way, you can merely point your analysis or presentation to an updated data workbook without having to do everything over again from scratch.
- Formulas and errors ?
Many people don’t know how to switch to manual calculation. (Tools, Options, Calculation, Manual.) This allows us to work on a big spreadsheet without waiting for it to calculate all the time. Then, when we want to calculate, we merely press the F9 key.Many people create much larger workbooks and spreadsheets than they should, and then get lost in them. I try to keep my workbooks and spreadsheets small, unless I have a specific reason not to do so.
Many people create many links between workbooks. This is a problem because the links can break, or get broken, or generate circular calculation errors. I try to link only from data to presentation.
Assume we have a column of data in the range A5:A10. If we want to sum that data, people generally enter the formula =SUM(A5:A10). Instead, I format cells A4 and A11 with a full border and gray fill. Then I sum using the range A4:A11. This allows me to add or delete rows between the gray borders without having to worry about formulas that reference that data. As long as I don’t touch the two gray border rows, I know I’m safe. (I don’t use this approach if I’m going to print the page for others, because it looks ugly. But that’s not a problem most of the time.)
- Formatting ?
I try never to use Merge Cells for centering labels across several columns. (In fact, I doubt that I’ve used Merge Cells more than half a dozen times, *ever*.) Instead, I use Format, Cells, Alignment, Horizontal, Center Across Selection. This achieves the same results but without my having to deal with the problems that merged cells creates.
- VBA ? VBA is very powerful, and can be a lot of fun. But be careful, it can grow to be an addiction. Most VBA users have found themselves spending hours to write a program that saves them several minutes. That’s obviously not a good use of our time.I try very hard to comment my code heavily. And when I look at old code, I *always* wish that I had commented it even more heavily. When you’re in the middle of a project, the reason for each line of code is obvious. But six months later, the whole thing is a mystery. COMMENT YOUR CODE.
Q: What is the best way for a non-programmer to learn and use VBA in her day to day work?
- Stay with a version of Excel prior to 2007, for two reasons: There aren’t any good macro books about 2007, and the macro recorder doesn’t work for a lot of what you do in 2007.
- Get a beginners book and start to experiment.
- Use the macro recorder and look at the results.
- Ask questions in newsgroups and forums.
- Get to know the Object Browser. (In the VBE, choose View, Object Browser. Or merely press the F2 key.)
I am very thankful to Charley for agreeing for this interview and sharing his views on some of the day to day excel issues all of us face. Many thanks to commenters who suggested some of the questions. I hope you found this interview helpful. Let me know through comments or email what you think about this.
Also share your ideas on who else should be interviewed?
15 Responses to “Highlight Employees by Performance Rating – Conditional Formatting Challenge”
While this might solve the question Shelly asked, there is another option that might be more useful - a pivot table could make a list of people who fall into the various categories, so, if you needed to simply see who got in the top bracket to give them a bonus, you would have that list
Simply sorting by the rankings would work too, but you would knock them out of alphabetical order.
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The solution I chose makes use of the percentile formula.
The percentile formula returns the value representing the K-th percentile of a range of values. The range of values is the first criteria, and K is the second criteria in the formula.
I applied Conditional Formatting according to the formulas in the order below:
5% =$C6>=PERCENTILE($C$6:$C$33,0.95) Dark Blue
15% =$C6>=PERCENTILE($C$6:$C$33,0.85) Light Blue
65% =$C6>=PERCENTILE($C$6:$C$33,0.1) Green
10% =$C6>=PERCENTILE($C$6:$C$33,0.05) Light Red
5% =$C6<PERCENTILE($C$6:$C$33,0.05) Dark Red
The issue I noted with this approach is that Zambi was not highlighted in my solution as it is in the solution provided. Unless I am mistaken, and I very well may be, the 10th percentile for this data set is at 2.21, so Zambi would fall above the 10th percentile with a PR of 2.3.
The first step to this was figuring out the 'buckets'; what scores should fall into each range. In attempting to match the formatting of the spreadsheet, I determined the buckets below.
5% = 95% to 100%
10% = 90% up to but not including 95%
65% = 10% up to but not including 90%
10% = 5% up to but not including 10%
5% = under 5%
After that, it is a relatively simple matter to plug the necessary values into the conditional formatting formulas as shown above.
One final consideration is that while the buckets above match the color banding on the spreadsheet, I believe that the original request suggests a different color banding with 6 buckets shown below.
Top 5% = 95 to 100% Dark blue
Top 10% = 85 up to but not including 95% Light blue
Top 65% = 35 up to but not including 85% Green
Bottom 10% = 10% down to but not including 5% Light Red
Bottom 5% = 5% or under Dark Red
This leaves one final bucket of 10 to 35% (exclusive of both values) that is not highlighted and so would remain white.
Thank you Chandoo and Shelly for an interesting and useful exercise. This is certainly a valuable technique to have in my reporting bag of tricks.
Use of PERCENTILE is a smarter way of doing it. Below is my solution.
First 5 % = Apply conditional formatting (Dark Blue) as highlight ">=" =PERCENTILE(C:C,0.95)
Next 15% = Apply conditional formatting (Lighter Blue) as highlight between =PERCENTILE(C:C,0.95)-0.01 and =PERCENTILE(C:C,0.8)
Next 65% = Apply conditional formatting as highlight (Olive Green) between =PERCENTILE(C:C,0.8)-0.01 and =PERCENTILE(C:C,0.15)
Next 10% = Apply conditional formatting as highlight (Lighter Red) between =PERCENTILE(C:C,0.15)-0.01 and =PERCENTILE(C:C,0.05)
Bottom 5% = Apply conditional formatting (Red) as less than =PERCENTILE(C:C,0.05)
I agree, this is a challenge faced by HR managers every year and use of percentile formulae is the most popular solution which permits further processing like making bell curve, applying increments based on segmentation etc.
Hi Chandoo,
I came at the same solution as yours (not looking at yours first) but I have hard coded the conditions in the conditional formatting. For example:
=AND($C6>=$D$10,$C6<$D$9)
I have done the same thing 5 times for each condition. This makes the formatting independent of the order of specification. I think it will work better across versions of excel.
To copy the same thing in all sheets, Shelly can copy these formatted cells with format painter and apply it to the relevant cells in next sheet and so on! I know 700 sheets will be difficult but I dont know of any other way to apply conditional formating rules to the whole sheet.
First i have used percentile formula in the next column of "percentile Threshold" where E5, E6.. is input to colour code.
The idea behind doing this is to replicate the formula for any range and any threshold
=PERCENTILE($C$3:$C$30,1-E5)
=PERCENTILE($C$3:$C$30,1-E6)
=PERCENTILE($C$3:$C$30,1-E7)
=PERCENTILE($C$3:$C$30,1-E8)
=PERCENTILE($C$3:$C$30,1-E9)
Now i have given logic to different employee by applying "if Formula"
=+IF(J3>=$G$5,1,IF(J3>=$G$6,2,IF(J3>=$G$7,3,IF(J3>=$G$8,4,5))))
where 'J" referes to PR and "G" refers to percentile derived from above mentioned formula.
once again it is replicable (just change reference points)
Now comes the major part of Conditional Formatting, i have used "use a formula to determine which cells to be formatted"
Formula =$j=5, format "required colour" Applies to "$I$3:$J$30"
plus put tick on stop if true
This solves the query, important point that this is repeatable and can be done for n number of departments
Thanks !
I had done some reading on it and in Excel 2010 a new function has been introduced, percentile.exc. Attaching a video which also talks why the old percentile function shouldn't be used as it acts erroneous at times. Might be worth a watch Chandoo,
http://www.itechtalk.com/thread10579.html
@Deepa
Quit correct.
Where ever you use statistical spreadsheet functions and are using excel 2010 you should use the new versions of the functions as MS did a lot of work to speed up and fix errors in the old functions.
Warning: If you use the new Excel 2010 statistical functions in Named Formulas most of them will crash excel so do keep that in mind.
Hello Chandoo,
When i first read the challenge file, i thought, the color that need to be applied for a given rule, also need to be picked dynamically as given in rule set. But in the solution file, i found that color is hard Coded. So in case, someone has same data, but wants different colors, he/she needs to goto manage rules and change colors.
Let me know if my understanding is correct, and if yes, can we also make the color to be applied dynamic?
Thanks
Kishore
HI I ALSO USED THE PERCENTILE FUNCTION. HOWEVER, I WENT A STEP FURTHER AND USING THE SMALL() FUNCTION I SORTED THE DATA BY PERCENTILE SO THE COLOSCHEME WOULD BE GROUPED BASED ON THE VALUE. THIS WAY IT IS BETTER AND EASIER TO VIEW.
[...] recently posted a challenge to help a reader with a [...]
Hi, i have got doubt regarding to the percentages that has been put in chandoo's spreadsheet, i cant understadn how he put directly. can some one please explain how chandoo put the percetages straight way that i stated below..
5%
15%
60%
10%
5%
I have stumbled on this post as the solution has been already given so I have taken the liberty to record a video where I show the implementation of it as well as adding a filtering feature which I hope can prove to be useful.
Thank you
http://www.xlninja.com/2012/06/28/how-to-use-excel-to-highlight-employee-performance-rating/
[...] scriu nici macar un cuvant din urmatorul articol. Astazi mi-am citit mailul si hopa challenge de la Chandoo. Cum puteam sa refuz asa ceva si m-am apucat de citit, iar dupa 5 min i-am spus sotului ca pe asta [...]
Question for Chandoo:
I came to your site late but am totally loving these challenges 🙂
I guess it all boils down to how the bins are set up.
I agree with the PERCENTILE.INC function.
pls help me understand where I am wrong.
I have determined following the bins:
bottom 5% <=2.00 (F6:F33 <=PERCENTILE(range,.05))
lower 15% (5+10) <= 2.40 (F6:F33 <=PERCENTILE(range,.15))
lower 80% (5+10+65) <=3.46 (F6:F33 <=PERCENTILE(range,.80))
lower 95% (5+10+65+15) <=4.00 (F6:F33 =PERCENTILE(range,.95))
top 5% <=4.20 (F6:F33 <=PERCENTILE(range,1.00))
I find that only Tom is highest scorer and unique top 5% achiever.
I notice that Chandoo has included Christy and Daniel in top 5% achievers. How can there be 3 people in top 5% out of a population of 28 (5% of 28 = 1.4, i.e. only one person can achieve that status)?
I tried different ways but cannot get to that distribution.
Rest of the work is simply organizing the conditional formatting rules with Stop If True box checked.
Thanks for your insights