14 Basic Skills for Chart Makers (Big question: How many do you have?)

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Blame John Walkenbach if you don’t like this post. There, I said it.

He started the 14 basic skills for men. And then added 14 basic skills for women. Not stopping there, he went ahead and added 14 basic skills for dogs.

Debra added her 14 cents by writing 14 basic skills for excel users.

I got jittery and quickly searched 14 basic skills for people writing 14 basic skills posts on google. Alas! nothing found. But being the inveterate non-give-upper I went ahead and prepared my list.

<drum roll> here is the,

14 basic skills for people making charts (or graphs or plots or ok, you get the point)

  1. Know when to not make a chart
  2. Know the basic chart types – bar charts, line charts, scatter charts, bubble charts, pie charts, dot plots and more
  3. Know how to massage, pre-process, arm twist your data so that charts can be constructed
  4. Know formulas like vlookup, match, index, indirect so that you can get what you want
  5. Know what chart junk means and how to get rid of it
  6. Know the types of charts to avoid and the perils of using them
  7. Know how many and what colors to use. Understand concepts like contrast and repetition
  8. Know that keeping it simple is far more effective than keeping it complex
  9. Know that charts are stories and give priority accordingly.
  10. Know how to use chart templates
  11. Know charting concepts like dynamic charts, sparklines, tag clouds, combining 2 chart types etc.
  12. Know the limitations of tools and use the right ones for the occasion (excel for simple and easy graphs, manyeyes for complex visualizations, R for fun and elaborate stuff, Google spreadsheets for maps and organization charts etc.)
  13. Know that there are beautiful examples around us and learn from them [what your zoo can teach you about visualization]
  14. Know where to look when you are stuck – PeltierTech, PHD Charting Pages, Google.

Now, it is time for the big screaming question:

How many of these skills you have? Where do you think you should improve?

Please share with us below.

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21 Responses to “How to Filter Odd or Even Rows only? [Quick Tips]”

  1. Vijay says:

    Infact, instead of using =ISEVEN(B3), how about to use =ISEVEN(ROW())

    So it takes away any chance of wrong referencing.

  2. Hui... says:

    I like Daily Dose of Excel

  3. vimal says:

    I like it.

  4. Luke M says:

    Just a heads up, you do need to have the Analysis ToolPak add-in activated to use the ISEVEN / ISODD functions. An alternative to ISEVEN would be:
    =MOD(ROW(),2)=0

  5. Debbi says:

    rather than use a formula, couldn't you enter "true" in first cell and "false" in the second and drag it down and than filter on true or false.

  6. Paul S says:

    Just for clarification, is Ashish looking to filter by even or odd Characters or rows?

  7. Fred says:

    so many functions to learn!

  8. Istiyak says:

    Nice support by chandoo and team as a helpdesk. Give us more to learn and make us awesome. Always be helpful.......

  9. Arps says:

    In case you want to delete instead of filter,

    IF your data is in Sheet1 column A
    Put this in Sheet2 column A and drag down
    =OFFSET(Sheet1!A$1,(ROWS($1:1)-1)*2,,)
    (This is to delete even rows)

    To delete odd rows :
    =OFFSET(Sheet1!A$2,(ROWS($1:1)-1)*2,,)

  10. Pippa says:

    If your numbered cells did not correspond to rows, the answer would be even simpler:
    =MOD([cell address],2), then filter by 0 to see evens or 1 to see odds.

  11. Matthew D. Healy says:

    I sometimes do this using an even simpler method. I add a new column called "Sign" and put the value of 1 in the first row, say cell C2 if C1 contains the header. Then in C3 I put the formula =-1 * C2, which I copy and paste into the rest of the rows (so C4 has =-1 * C3 and so forth). Now I can just apply a filter and pick either +1 or -1 to see half the rows.

    Another way, which works if I want three possibilities: in C2 I put the value 1, in C3 I put the value 2, in C4 I put the value 3, then in C5 I put the formula =C2 then I copy C5 and paste into all the remaining rows (so C6 gets =C3, C7 gets =C4, etc.). Now I can apply a filter and pick the value 1, 2, or 3 to see a third of the rows.

    Extending this approach to more than 3 cases is left as an exercise for the reader.

  12. Paulo says:

    Another way =MOD(ROW();2). In this case, must to choose betwen 1 and 0.

  13. Makhan Butt says:

    very different style Odd or Even Rows very easy way to visit this site

    http://www.handycss.com/tips/odd-or-even-rows/

  14. Terhile says:

    Thanks for the tip, it worked like magic, saved having to delete row by row in my database.

  15. majid says:

    Thankssssssssssssssss

  16. Bhanu says:

    Hi Chandoo- First of all thanks for the trick. It helped me a lot. Here I have one more challenge. Having filtered the data based on odd. I want to paste data in another sheet adjacent to it. How can I do that?
    For Example-
    A 1 odd
    B 3 odd
    C 4 even
    D 6 even
    I have fileted the above data for odd and want to copy the "This is odd number" text in adjacent/next sheet here. How can I do that. After doing this my data should look like this
    A 1 odd This is odd number
    B 3 odd This is odd number
    C 4 even
    D 6 even

  17. Adriana says:

    Hi! Could you please help me find a formula to filter by language?
    Thank you!

  18. avinash says:

    Chandoo SIR,

    I HAVE A DATA IN EXCEL ROWS LIKE BELOW IS THERE ANY FORMULA OR A WAY WHERE I CAN INSTRUCT I CAN MAKE CHANGES , MEANS I WANT TO WRITE ONLY , THE FIG IS FRESH, BUT IN BELOW ROW IT WILL AUTOMATICALLY TAKE THE SOME WORDS FROM FIGS AND MAKE IN PLURAL FORM , WHILE USING '' ARE'' LIKE BELOW

    The fig is fresh - row 1
    Figs are fresh - row 2
    The Pomegranate is red - row 3
    Pomegranates are red - row 4

  19. Arshad Hussain Shah says:

    =IF(EVEN(A1)=A1,"EVEN - do something","ODD - do something else") with iferron (for blank Cell)

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