I won’t eat donut with a thread inside, but lets make one anyway!

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Today lets take a stroll outside what Excel can do and make something fancy, fun and may be useful.

Nowadays, many newspapers, websites and magazines are featuring info-graphics. An info-graphic is a collection of shiny, colorful & data-full charts (or often pieces of text.) In many of these info-graphics, you can see threaded-donut charts. Not sure what that is..? It is not same as the blasphemy of spoiling a soft, sweet, supple donut with a piece of string. No one should be excused for an offense like that.

What I am talking about is this:

Donut string chart in Excel - demo

How to create this chart?

A word of caution

Before you smack your lips at the thought of stringy donuts, let me warn you.

  • Go easy with these charts. Use them sparingly. As a rule a thermo-meter chart would be better (easy to make, takes less space, scalable) for situations like this.

Now that we have learned the ill-effects of donuts, let’s make & eat one, cause we are bad-ass like that.

Set up data cells

Data for threaded donut chartThis is easy. We will use C4 to capture the input for donut size.

In C5, write =1-C4

This will give us the balance portion of donut where thread should appear.

Create a donut chart

Select both cells and insert a donut chart.

This is what we get. Just the donut, no strings attached 🙂

Just the donut, no strings attached!

Make 2nd slice of donut transparent

This is simple.

  1. Select the 2nd slice of donut (click on it once, click again)
  2. Fill it with no color, set no line.
  3. Your donut is transparent.

Adding thread to donut – 2 ways to do it

There are many ways to cook a donut.

Method 1: Placing a circle shape behind the donut chart

  1. Donut string chart with circle in the backgroundSelect plot area of the donut chart and make it transparent.
  2. Draw a circle shape (Insert ribbon > Shapes > Circle)
  3. Fill with no color, make the outline thick enough
  4. Align centers of chart & circle (select both, use Format ribbon > Align and then Align middle, Align center)
  5. Push the circle behind the chart using “Send to back” from Format ribbon.
  6. For extra safety, group the chart and circle together. This way they will stay together.

Adding cirlce as plot area background to create threaded donut chartMethod 2: Use circle as background image for plot area

This is my favorite.

  1. Draw a circle shape somewhere on your worksheet.
  2. Fill it with no color and make the outline thick enough.
  3. Copy the circle shape (Select it, press CTRL+C)
  4. Select Donut chart’s plot area
  5. Press CTRL+1 to format it (alternatively right-click > format plot area)
  6. Follow the steps in image aside.

Download Threaded Donut Chart

I wish we can download donuts, but that day is not here.

Click here to download the donut chart workbook. Examine chart settings to understand this technique better.

Should you use this chart?

We all know that donuts and pies alone cannot make a healthy diet. But once in a while, a donut adds variety. Same goes for charts too.

Go with tried and tested charts like,

  • Bars & columns
  • Line charts
  • Conditional formatting icons
  • Sparklines
  • Scatter plot
  • May be an area chart or two

They are easy to set up, easy to understand, scalable, fit in to any sized report and awesome.

That said, I would certainly experiment with stringy donuts in my future reports to see how they fit. A good example is to use this to depict % completion of a project or goal. Looks slick, easy to read and not too difficult to create.

What other charts work in this situation?

If you have a situation to show x out y is done, then consider these other charts too:

What do you think?

When it comes to donuts, people have strong opinions. What about you? Do you like the stringy donut chart? Are you planning to use it any of your upcoming reports or dashboards? Please tell us using comments.

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24 Responses to “Free Excel Risk Map Template”

  1. Ron says:

    Why didn't you include the mitigation or risk IDs in the chart?

    • Chandoo says:

      You can easily add such detail by modifying the TEXTJOIN function. Another way to use them is to add a slicer to highlight all risks that have a specific mitigation strategy or team member assigned to them. I left out those bits fto keep the article short.

      • Rajesh says:

        I tried adding a slicer filter for the mitigation step but the TEXTJOIN is not affected by it. I added a helper column called "Visible" using the AGGREGATE function but I am unable to think of a method to pass that on to the map.
        Could you please help, Chandoo?

        Thanks

      • MyvJ says:

        Hello everyone,

        Another amazing tutorial, great content and tips! My question is about slicers. How do you add slicers to this matrix? I've added 2 columns in my workbook table (Work Stream and Project Name) and I want to be able to filter (slice) the matrix on Project Name, but having some trouble with this. The slicer works fine in the data table, but how do I connect it to the risk matrix, so that only risk titles show up for the selected project?

        Many thanks in advance for your guidance,
        MyvJ

  2. shashi kumar says:

    Can you create a sheet in live stock market data price change with profit and loss graph with time. which could indicate live profit and loss in each time frame 5minute, 10 minute, 15 minute, 30minute, hourly with some modifications

  3. Henrik B. Wieder says:

    Hi

    I've tried to get your formula to work, but likelihood / impact 1/1 does not seem to work.

  4. Sally says:

    Hi Chandoo

    Awesome instructions! Thank you so much, this really helped me.

    I was wondering if it would be possible to list the Risk ID number along with the Risk Title with a dash in between, rather than a bullet point? I have had a try at this but I keep getting a #VALUE error. I can see it's wrong but can't figure out what it should be instead. If you have time do you mind letting me know what I'm doing wrong?

    {=" - " & TEXTJOIN(CHAR(10)&" - ",TRUE,
    IF(RiskRegister[Likelihood]=$A17,IF(RiskRegister[Consequence]=F$3,CONCAT(RiskRegister[ID],RiskRegister[Risk Title]),""),""))}

    Thank you!

    Sally

    • Chandoo says:

      Hey Sally, You are welcome.

      I think the CONCAT inside TEXTJOIN is the culprit. Try this and hopefully you should see the ID too.

      {=" - " & TEXTJOIN(CHAR(10)&" - ",TRUE,
      IF(RiskRegister[Likelihood]=$A17,IF(RiskRegister[Consequence]=F$3,RiskRegister[ID]&RiskRegister[Risk Title],""),""))}

      • Sally says:

        Hi Chandoo
        You're a legend! Thank you so much! I had to make a minor tweak but otherwise it worked perfectly. Here is the tweaked version in case it helps anyone else:

        =TEXTJOIN(CHAR(10),TRUE,
        IF(RiskRegister[Likelihood]=$A8,IF(RiskRegister[Consequence]=C$3,RiskRegister[ID]&" - "&RiskRegister[Risk Title],""),""))

        Thank you again!

        • Ruben says:

          Hi, Im not able to change the formula when trying to add risk Id instead of bullet point.

          trying this: ="• "&TEXTJOIN(CHAR(10)&"• ";TRUE;IF(risks[Probability of Occurance *]=$C5;IF(risks[Severity of potential Impact *]=H$8;risks[Risk ID]&". "[Title *];"");""))

          Cant see any solution on this.

          thankful for help

  5. kris says:

    Hi Chandoo,

    This is perfect - One quick question, How can I add a hyperlink to the risks - So that I can click on the particular risk and it takes me to the actual row of that item.

    Many thanks in advance.

  6. SY says:

    HI Chandoo,

    Is there a way to only display filtered item. Once the list gets big, it's hard to see all risk.

    Kind regards,
    SinYen

  7. Jim says:

    Hi Chandoo,

    Quick question

    1) Is there a way to remove duplicates within each risk block?
    2) Is there a way to have the results in the chart update based on a filter or slicer?

    Thanks a lot

  8. Lebo says:

    Hi Chandoo,

    The risk map is a brilliant tool, and I wanted to the risk map to only show Open risks. How can I do that?

  9. Eric M says:

    Just found this today as I am making a risk matrix as well. I got the formula to work with this, where a risk score is above 30. Risk score = probability*impact*modifier.

    So this works flawlessly, ="- "&TEXTJOIN(CHAR(10)&"- ",TRUE,IF('Risk tracker'!G4:G27>=30,IF(Table1[Urgency]="Now",'Risk tracker'!A4:A27,""),""))

    I am trying to find a range now. Risk score in between 21-29. I tried using the AND function, but I couldnt get it to work. Is there anyway to get this formula to work with a range as mentioned above?

    • Chandoo says:

      Thanks Eric.

      You can't use AND() as it is not able to return arrays. You can try below formula.
      ="- "&TEXTJOIN(CHAR(10)&"- ",TRUE,IF(('Risk tracker'!G4:G27>=21)*('Risk tracker'!G4:G27<=29),IF(Table1[Urgency]="Now",'Risk tracker'!A4:A27,""),""))

  10. Michal says:

    Hello, this template is nice, thank you but im facing a problem when I need to find a range of impact. I cant figure out how..

    My actual form is "="• "&TEXTJOIN(CHAR(10)&"• ";TRUE;IF(Table1[Impact]=A8;Table1[Title];"");"")"

    Where A8 is number "1" so this formula finds everything with impact 1 and shows the titles.
    What I need to get is a range so,
    A8 is "1" and A9 is "2" and I need the formula to find all titles which impact is between 1 and 2.
    I tried the AND function and so on, nothing worked..

    Can you help me please?

  11. masoud says:

    i tried everything in your video in the end i only get the bullet... please guide me through

    • masoud says:

      Sorted it... i was flash filling the other cells and it took other columns...

      i do have another question though... how can i use slicers to filter the content of the matrix, so that it'll show only the departments i select?

      slicer is working fine with the table, but the matrix still shows all the results

  12. JP says:

    Just want to thank you for this.

    It is awesome.

  13. MyvJ says:

    Hello everyone,
    I think I accidentally nested my question in another thread. Apologies!
    This is another amazing Excel tutorial, with great content and tips! My question is about slicers. How do you add slicers to this matrix? I've added 2 columns in my workbook table (Work Stream and Project Name) and I want to be able to filter (slice) the matrix on Project Name, but having some trouble with this. The slicer works fine for the data table, but how do I connect it to the risk matrix, so that only risk titles show up for the selected project?

    Many thanks in advance for your guidance,
    MyvJ

  14. Josy says:

    This is another amazing Excel tutorial! My question is about slicers. How do you add slicers to this matrix? Please advise

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