In Petal Charts – an Alternative to Radar Charts I have suggested using a radar chart tweak to replace the radar charts. Both PTSBlog and Information Ocean have posted their critical reviews of these petal charts.
So as a penance for proposing petals, I am going to provide a tutorial on creating a comparison table in Excel for replacing the radar charts. We are going to create a comparison table chart like the one featured on right that is proposed at Information Ocean.
Creating Spot Matrix Charts in Excel in Just 5 Steps
The trick for creating comparison table like the above lies in using a dingbat (symbol) font named “Wingdings 2” that is pre-installed in most of the Windows machines.
- First arrange your data in tabular structure. For eg. let us assume this is the data we are trying compare:
- Now create another identical table. We are going to fill this one with one of the 5 circular symbols : .
- Next go to an empty cell, lets say C3, and press ALT+I followed by S (Menu > Insert > Symbol). Set the font to “Wingdings 2” and insert these 5 circular symbols to the cell C3.
- Now, in the blank table you have created in step 2, let us write formulas to fetch one of the circle symbols based on our data. A sample formula can be like this:
=MID($C$3,FLOOR((data-1)/5,1)+1,1)
Copy paste the formula in the entire table. - Finally, change the font of the new table to “wingdings 2”. Adjust colors / size if needed. When you are done, the comparison chart table should look like:
.
Next go to an empty cell, lets say C3, and press ALT+I followed by S (Menu > Insert > Symbol). Set the font to “Wingdings 2” and insert these 5 circular symbols to the cell C3.
Download the Spot Matrix Charts Template and Replace your Radars
That is all. How do you like this compared to petals?
One Response to “Loan Amortization Schedule in Excel – FREE Template”
The balance formula as given doesnt seem to work on my excel