Yesterday, you learned about Print Areas – a time & paper saving feature of Excel. While print areas are great, you can only set up one print area per sheet. What if you want to print either report or data based on user selection?
In such cases, you can set up dynamic print areas.
That is right. See below demo to understand how it looks. Read on to learn how to set up dynamic print areas.
Set up dynamic print areas – tutorial:
- In your spreadsheet, select any range of cells and create a print area (click on the link for instructions).
- Now, identify the all ranges that may be printed. To keep it simple, let’s say there are 2 such ranges. Give them names like report and data.
- Set up a selection mechanism thru form controls so that user can pick what they want to print. Something like this:
Link the option buttons to a cell, say M8. - Go to Formulas ribbon tab and click on Name Manager.
- You can see the Print_Area named range, pointing to the range you originally selected.
- Edit the range and write a CHOOSE formula to return either report or data range based on M8 (form control) value. Like this:
=CHOOSE($M$8, report, data)
That is all. Your print area is now dynamic.
Download dynamic print areas demo workbook
Please click here to download dynamic print areas workbook. Examine the formula for Print_Area named range to understand better.
Other creative ways to use print areas:
- Your users can see something but print an alternative range (may be B/W compatible), with print areas.
- Your print areas can depend on latest date (for example, print coupon before expiry date and print alternative material after expiry)
- Your users can print reports at various levels – summary or detailed with dynamic print areas.
How are planning to use dynamic print areas?
How do you like this technique? Please tell me how you are planning to use dynamic print areas in your work. Post your comments below.
14 Responses to “Group Smaller Slices in Pie Charts to Improve Readability”
I think the virtue of pie charts is precisely that they are difficult to decode. In many contexts, you have to release information but you don't want the relationship between values to jump at your reader. That's when pie charts are most useful.
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Chandoo,
millions of ants cannot be mistaken.....There should be a reason why everybody continues using Pie charts, despite what gurus like you or Jon and others say.
one reason could be because we are just used to, so that's what we need to change, the "comfort zone"...
i absolutely agree, since I've been "converted", I just find out that bar charts are clearer, and nicer to the view...
Regards,
Martin
[...] says we can Group Smaller Slices in Pie Charts to Improve Readability. Such a pie has too many labels to fit into a tight space, so you need ro move the labels around [...]
Chandoo -
You ask "Can I use an alternative to pie chart?"
I answer in You Say “Pie”, I Say “Bar”.
This visualization was created because it was easy to print before computers. In this day and age, it should not exist.
I think the 100% Bar Chart is just as useless/unreadable as Pies - we should rename them something like Mama's Strudel Charts - how big a slice would you like, Dear?
My money's with Jon on this topic.
The primary function of any pie chart with more than 2 or 3 data points is to obfuscate. But maybe that is the main purpose, as @Jerome suggests...
@Jerome.. Good point. Also sometimes, there is just no relationship at all.
@Martin... Organized religion is finding it tough to get converts even after 2000+ years of struggle. Jon, Stephen, countless others (and me) are a small army, it would take atleast 5000 more years before pie charts vanish... patience and good to have you here 🙂
@Jon .. very well done sir, very well done.
good points every one...
I've got to throw my vote into Jon's camp (which is also Stephen Few's camp) -- bars just tend to work better. One observation about when we say "what people are used to." There are two distinct groups here (depending on the situation, a person can fall in either one): the person who *creates* the chart and the person who *consumes* the chart. Granted, the consumers are "used to" pie charts. But, it's not like a bar chart is something they would struggle to understand or that would require explanation (like sparklines and bullet graphs). Chart consumers are "used to" consuming whatever is put in front of them. Chart creators, on the other hand, may be "used to" creating pie charts, but that isn't an excuse for them to continue to do so -- many people are used to driving without a seatbelt, leaving lights on in their house needlessly, and forwarding not-all-that-funny anecdotes via email. That doesn't mean the practice shouldn't be discouraged!
[...] example that Chandoo used recently is counting uses of words. Clearly, there are other meanings of “bar” (take bar mitzvah or bar none, for [...]
[…] Grouping smaller slices in pie chart […]
Good article. Is it possible to do that with line charts?
Hi,
Is this available in excel 2013?