Gauges are a familiar metaphor, everyone can understand them, you can see them everywhere – near your stove, ac, car, gaming console, pc – you name it. So, when you are preparing a chart to tell a point, gauge chart like the one above can be effective. (I know charting pros like Jon Peltier wouldn’t agree with this and prefer speedometer charts only in cartoons.)
Unfortunately Excel doesn’t have a gauge chart as a default chart type. They of course have a 3d line chart, but let us save it for your last day at work. Meanwhile we can cook a little gauge chart in excel using a donut and pie (not the eating kind) in 4 steps.
Click here to download the excel speedometer chart template and play around.
1. Have your data ready
For a typical gauge or speedometer chart we need to have these 5 different values
- What the is gauge size?
- What is the range of Red zone?
- What is the range of Yellow / Amber zone?
- What is the range of Green zone?
- What is the value to be shown on Gauge?
In our case we can use typical values like you see on the right.
2. Make a doughnut chart using Red, Yellow and Green Values & Pie Chart
This is a simple step, just select the data for speedometer and click on insert chart and select “Doughnut” as chart type. Make sure you have added a data row in the end with value as 100 to get a gauge with 180° or 50 to get a gauge with 270°
Making the pie chart
This is another simple step, easier than eating pie. Just create a pie chart with 3 values,
- Gauge value
- 1
- 200 minus gauge value + 1
3. Blank out the bottom half of doughnut and pie charts
Just select the blank portions of doughnut and pie charts and set their border & background colors to none.
While you are at it, adjust the colors of donut portions to red, amber and green (or your favorite speedometer colors)
4. Finally, put the pie chart on top of donut chart
Just drag and drop the pie chart on the donut chart. Tweak the colors if needed, adjust the “send to background” / “bring to foreground” settings.
That is all, you will now have a neat looking gauge / speedometer chart to show off. Don’t forget to download the Microsoft excel gauge chart template
Also try: Thermometer chart, Partition chart, Chart around the clock, Min-max charts
11 Responses to “Fix Incorrect Percentages with this Paste-Special Trick”
I've just taught yesterday to a colleague of mine how to convert amounts in local currency into another by pasting special the ROE.
great thing to know !!!
Chandoo - this is such a great trick and helps save time. If you don't use this shortcut, you have to take can create a formula where =(ref cell /100), copy that all the way down, covert it to a percentage and then copy/paste values to the original column. This does it all much faster. Nice job!
I was just asking peers yesterday if anyone know if an easy way to do this, I've been editing each cell and adding a % manually vs setting the cell to Percentage for months and just finally reached my wits end. What perfect timing! Thanks, great tip!
If it's just appearance you care about, another alternative is to use this custom number format:
0"%"
By adding the percent sign in quotes, it gets treated as text and won't do what you warned about here: "You can not just format the cells to % format either, excel shows 23 as 2300% then."
Dear Jon S. You are the reason I love the internet. 3 year old comments making my life easier.
Thank you.
Here is a quicker protocol.
Enter 10000% into the extra cell, copy this cell, select the range you need to convert to percentages, and use paste special > divide. Since the Paste > All option is selected, it not only divides by 10000% (i.e. 100), it also applies the % format to the cells being pasted on.
@Martin: That is another very good use of Divide / Multiply operations.
@Tony, @Jody: Thank you 🙂
@Jon S: Good one...
@Jon... now why didnt I think of that.. Excellent
Thank You so much. it is really helped me.
Big help...Thanks
Thanks. That really saved me a lot of time!
Is Show Formulas is turned on in the Formula Ribbon, it will stay in decimal form until that is turned off. Drove me batty for an hour until I just figured it out.