This is a guest post by Vijay, our in-house VBA Expert.
Hello Everyone,
This post shows how to make project risk maps using VBA. If you have modern versions of Excel (365, 2019 or 2016 with TEXTJOIN() function), see the Excel Risk Map Template page.
We all have some projects to manage every now and then and there are needs of various trackers that help us in gauging the progress of the same. One of the most important things are heat maps that quickly help us in visually displaying the names of the projects that need special attention and resolve issues that are impacting them.
So go ahead and grab a cup of coffee and read this article that would help you in creating a Risk Heat Map in excel (will use some double shot espresso in the form of VBA code) to help us to the target.
Before we begin – Data for Project Risk Maps
First of all we will understand what we are trying to create here by looking at the image below.
You would have seen a picture like this while managing project risks.
So today we will be learn how to create this in Excel to become more awesome in managing projects.
What is important here is how your data for the projects/entities being tracked laid out. We will use the Excel data tables [structured references] to help us here.
There is a Setup sheet in the excel file where we can add the names of the projects that we will use on the data table, as well as the Probability and Impact have been defined as data tables. This helps us in using their contents as drop down options in the data table.
Adding Named Ranges
We need to use the Name Manager to create named ranges to be able to use the data table columns as drop down items, this is show below.
- 1.Type this in a blank cell and then copy “=tblProject[Project]”.
- 2.Bring up the Name Manager by pressing CTRL + F3, or by going to the Formula’s Tab and clicking on Name Manager.
- 3.Click on New
- 4.Type the name lstProject in the Name box
- 5.Paste “=tblProject[Project]” in the Refers To box and the click on OK.
Repeat this process for “=tblProbability[Probability]” and “tblImpact[Impact]”
Now you can go the actual risk data table and select the Project columns first blank cell and put in Data Validation List here, choose List and put the Source as lstProject. Repeat this for Probability and Impact cells. You will only need to this one time for the first row, new rows when added to the table will automatically contain these settings.
After we have created the above data table, we need to add 3 columns to the right side where we will setup the calculation that will be used to update the risk map.
a) First Column is named as “ProbabilityScore” Since probability has been marked as “A, B, C or D”, we would need to convert this into a number. This is done by using the below formula.
=IFERROR(CHOOSE(MATCH([@Probability],lstProbability,0),4,3,2,1),””)
b) Second Column is named as “SearchString”
=IF([@Status]=”Open”,CONCATENATE(“x”,[@ProbabilityScore]^4+[@Impact]),””)
c) Third column is named as “DisplayName”
=CONCATENATE([@ID],” “,LEFT([@Project],20),IF(LEN([@Project])>20,”…”,””))
Understanding the SearchString Table
When creating the SearchString we are raising the probability score to the power of 4, this is what I have chosen you may select any number that you need. Below is the resulting matrix of numbers that we obtain by doing this.
The last columns in only used for trimming the name of the project to 20 characters of there is a big name, else the actual name of the project is used to display in the Risk Map.
Understanding the Code
So now we are ready to look into the VBA code that helps us in creating the Risk Map.
Public Function showRiskMap(inputRange As Range, searchString As String, dataRange As Range, separator As String)
Dim cntr As Long
Dim tempArray() As Variant
Dim tempDataArray() As Variant
Dim tempString As String
tempArray = inputRange.Value
tempDataArray = dataRange.Value
For cntr = LBound(tempArray) To UBound(tempArray)
If tempArray(cntr, 1) = searchString Then
tempString = tempString & tempDataArray(cntr, 1) & separator
End If
Next
showRiskMap = tempString
End Function
We are sending 4 parameters to this function which are
- inputRange – this is the SearchString columns data
- SearchString – this is a manual enrty such as “x257”
- dataRange – this is the Display Name column from where we will pick the name of the project to display
- separator – this is CHAR(10) which is a line break in case we have multiple projects falling in the same category
We are making use of Array’s here to pass the data from the Table column into the array and then a simple For loop to parse them and show us the results.
I hope you will enjoy this article and this assist in managing your projects in a much efficient way.
Download Excel Risk Map File
Click here to download the file & use it to understand this technique.
Click here for Risk Map Template for new versions of Excel.
Do you use Excel for creating Risk Maps?
Do you also user Excel for creating Risk Maps? If yes please put in the comment below how do you use the same and what has been your experience. Leave a comment.
More on VBA & Macros
If you are new to VBA, Excel macros, go thru these links to learn more.
Join our VBA Classes
If you want to learn how to develop applications like these and more, please consider joining our VBA Classes. It is a step-by-step program designed to teach you all concepts of VBA so that you can automate & simplify your work.
Click here to learn more about VBA Classes & join us.
About Vijay
Vijay (many of you know him from VBA Classes), joined chandoo.org full-time this February. He will be writing more often on using VBA, data analysis on our blog. Also, Vijay will be helping us with consulting & training programs. You can email Vijay at sharma.vijay1 @ gmail.com. If you like this post, say thanks to Vijay.
33 Responses to “Show Months & Years in Charts without Cluttering”
Very CooOOOoool 🙂
Would it work if I merely change the display format for the dates, or do they actually need to be retyped in that format (Nov, Dec, etc)?
ps- it's only about 34 donuts per month, or slightly more than 1 per day. Yum!
To make it work automatically when you create a chart, delete the labels above the Year and Month columns, but keep the label above the Y data (Donuts). The blank cells tell Excel that the first row and first two columns (indicated by the blanks) are special, so it uses the first row for series names an the first two columns for X axis labels.
This is better than the other kind of donut chart, but you'll soon be carrying a big donut around your midsection.
First off, thank you Chandoo for being respectful and taking out the "Jesus" comment. Not that I'd threaten to kill you, or start world-wide riots, or make you go into hiding if you didn't (as OTHERS would; wink, wink, nudge, nudge)... I just really appreciate your respectulness and consideration; so thank you. I was meaning to write you about it, but when I came to your site you'd already made the edit... so again, thank you!
Secondly, I wanna say I think there's an easier way to do what you are demonstrating. I've got a pivot chart with months of data and all I had to do was right-click the x axis and then select "format axis", under "Axis Options" there's a check-box that says "Multi-level Category Labels". The chart I was able to do this on was a pivotchart however so maybe it wouldn't be that easy for a non-pivotchart.
Anyway, love the site. Keep up the good work. Thanks also for being so open about your success, it's very encouraging and motivating.
God (aka Jesus) Bless. 🙂
Hi Chandoo - great site! Another option to save space is to simply rotate the orientation of the text by 90 degrees, so the dates read vertical rather than horizontal. However, I like the elegance of your solution also.
Hey Chandoo -- Great tip. Only yesterday I was working through some strange behaviour with formatting dates in PivotCharts. Seems the axes never want to cooperate. This is a neat and elegant solution I hadn't thought of using. May need to abandon pivotcharts to use formulas like that, but if we use dynamic named ranges, no big sacrifice.
BTW, whatever did you do to get your site blocked in China? Never heard of regime change by a grass-root spreadsheet movement. Maybe your ISP is hosting some problem sites. Chandoo.org is certainly worth it for me to fire up the VPN, but I'm sure you would lose a lot of other visitors from the middle kingdom.
Chandoo ... pls help.. the link is blocked over here... pls can you put the regular link... 🙂
@JP... Excel Axis formatting is linked to cell formatting by default. So you can just have the dates which are formatted to look like months (mmm).
@Erin: It was not my intention to mock anyone's faith or religion. I just used the word as it is quite common. I decided to remove it as I got 2 emails from readers requesting for the same.
Also, the pivot charts take pivot table groupings by default, so you need not do any of the above while making charts from pivot tables.
@Kein: I am not sure why Chinese authorities decided to block my site. I wish they would actually look at the content instead of blocking sites based on simple text matching rules.
@Kapil: The file is mirrored here: http://chandoo.org/img/d/date-axis-months-years-trick.xls
Cool, really cool...
Nice one Chandoo,
Also would like to mention abt useful method while creating dynamic charts.
In any chart where in the months keep on adding - instead of changing the range for the chart every time we add a month, we can actually format the months as dates (probably 1st of every month) still keep the format as "mmm" AND while selecting the data, we can select a huge rows (date column) once and for all, and the chart adjusts automatically with the data that we entered. So next month when I enter Dec's data, I need not change the source data of the chart, however it automatically adjusts.
Hope I made sense.!
Regards,
SS
Thanks, Chandoo! This is a great tip - one that I will definitely put to use. I typically have an axis with mmm yy format, aligned vertically, but this will definitely look a bit cleaner (except in cases where the chart is too small for the axis labels to be displayed horizontally, even without the mmm yy on one line). Thanks again!
Tom
Chandoo,
Thank you for the posts you are very diligent not to mention very helpful. I would like to know how to get the separation lines on the axis? For example your candy sales chart has longer lines separating east and west how do you format that?
Thanks for being very awesome!
-Josh
Hi Chandoo, we can look the formulas because there is a message:"Unsupported features".
Could you send a diferent Link ?
Thanks.
@SS But what if you've got formulas in the data block (i.e where you would enter static data for the month of december)? My chart now shows #N/A #N/A in the axis with no data for all future dates.
Chandoo, I've got a dynamic range set up showing #N/A errors for future dates. The MMM-DD date format format in row works fine, but when I use YYYY and MMM in two rows, the axis shows #N/A #N/A for all future dates with no data. How would you go about keeping those future months hidden?
Matt -
In order for the axis to automatically extend to the dates within the range and ignore #N/A at the end, you need a date-scale axis, and for this you need to use one column with the complete date, not two columns with year and month.
If you want to use two columns, you need to generate Names in the worksheet which define ranges only as long as the number of months. I have a review of dynamic chart approaches in http://peltiertech.com/WordPress/dynamic-chart-review/ and a whole category on my blog at http://peltiertech.com/WordPress/category/dynamic-charts/. Chandoo also has examples of his own on this site.
How do you make a dynamic chart out of this?
I can't get the axis labels range right.
I tried something like this:
=OFFSET(REPORT!$H$10:$I$10;0;0;COUNTA(REPORT!$H$10:$I$100);1)
Any idea?
Ethan -
Your offset formula defines a range 1 row in size, but the technique here requires 2 rows. Your definition should end with
;2)
instead of
;1)
Thanks Jon,
Got it working now
Great! Now, is there any way to do this directly in Powerpoint? I don't like having linked excel files, so I create the graphs right inside Powerpoint, any way to do this there? I tried and was unsuccessful.
Thanks.
Cool tip Chandoo......thanks
[...] extract year and month from dates to avoid a mess in our stock chart. Chandoo has a great post: Show Months & Years in Charts without ClutteringIn cell B2:=YEAR(D2)In cell B3:=IF(YEAR(D3)=YEAR(D2), "", YEAR(D3))Cell C2:=IF(TEXT(D2, [...]
Hi there,
I have got a data ranging for 3 years. I want to show a chart which shows Jan of 2011, 2012 and 2013 together side by side; then Feb11, Feb12 and Feb13 side by side, then Mar11, Mar12 and Mar13, and so on until December.
Please help. Thanks.
@Bilal
Do you want a number of charts next to each other as separate charts or the data next to each other in a single chart?
What type of chart were you thinking about?
Can you post your data for us to review?
Refer upload instructions at: http://chandoo.org/forum/threads/posting-a-sample-workbook.451/
Hi there
Very good solution this. I have another question on it, though. How do you format the X-axis with monthly gaps (ie, with labels "Jan 2012", "Apr", "Jul", "Oct", "Jan 2013", "Mar", etc), when you're dealing with a data series with weekly or daily data points? The Axis Options dialogue box doesn't appear to offer "Date axis" as an option under the "Axis Type" section.
I've managed to do it in one case with weekly data by setting the interval between tick marks at 13 -- the approximate number of weeks in a quarter -- to get 3-month intervals. But this wouldn't work if I wanted to show 1-month intervals, or had a more detailed daily data series to work with.
Any luck getting the dates to work on a scatter graph? I'm only getting numbers. Works fine on line graphs though.
How can we do the vice versa? i.e. on the x-axis showing year on the level 1, and months on level 2.
I wanted to build these kind of axis labels for 5 years, with year on top and months at the bottom, but it should form in such a way that the seperating lines should seperate the entire data set only at December of each year, and no lines in between any month.
@Apoorve
Just re-arrange the columns
You need to put a space in all cells where you don't want a year
See the attached file
http://chandoo.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/Chart-for-Apoorve.xlsx
Unfortunately you don't get any control over lines its all or nothing.
Hello - the link seems to be broken:
http://cid-b663e096d6c08c74.office.live.com/view.aspx/Public/date-axis-months-years-trick.xls
Regards.
Like!!
Three times already today I have used this website and saved a ton of work time in researching excel tricks.
Suggestion: Why not have a "like" or "this article was useful to me" button. That way you can see what is most useful by your users and maybe generate more content based on those "likes".
Just saying. Thanks again and you're doing a great job!
Thanks for the tip. However, I couldn't download your file. The link is broken.
Thank You for taking the time to post this tip. I hope that you have a blessed day.
The link does not work properly and I'm not sure how to actually get the graph to display like this, its frustrating me a tonne. I cant work out what to google either to find an answer elsewhere! 🙁
Is this possible with waterfall chart. Data hereunder -
Years Abbrevation Amt
2020 BEG 2,006
REV 1,950
EMP 1,058
DM (3,244)
OOE 1,078
OPMT 182
AB (638)
END 2,392
2021 REV 8,534
EMP 67
DM (2,142)
OOE (3,120)
OPMT 510
AB 1,008
END 7,249