True story:
On Friday (17th April – 2015), I flew from Vizag (my town) to Hyderabad so that I can catch a flight to San Francisco to attend a conference. As I had 10 hours of overlay between the flights in Hyderabad, I checked in to a lounge area so that I can watch some sports, eat food while pretending to do work on my laptop. There was a gentleman sitting in adjacent space doing some work in Excel. As I began to compose few emails, the gentleman in next sitting space asked me what I do for living. Our conversation went like this.
Me: I run a software company
He: Oh, so you must be good with computers
Me: smiles and cringes at the stereotyping
He: What is the formula to select all the blank cells in my Excel data and highlight them in Yellow color
Mind you, he had no idea that I work in Excel. We were 2 random guys in airport lounge watching sports and eating miserable food.
Me: Well, what are you trying to do?
He: You see, I am auditing this data. I need to locate all the blank rows and set them in different color so that my staff can fill up missing information. Right now, I am selecting one row at a time and filling the colors. Is there a one step solution to this problem?
Needless to say, I showed him how to do it faster, which led to an interesting 3 hours at the lounge.
End of true story.
So today, let’s understand how to find & highlight all the blank cells in the data.
Let’s take a look at the data:
Here is a sample of data.
One important thing to keep in mind:
- This data is not structured as table.
There are 3 powerful & simple methods to find & highlight blank cells.
Method 1: Selection & Highlight approach
In this method, we just select all the blank cells in one go and fill them with yellow color.
First select the entire range of cells where you data is located. Using CTRL+Arrow keys is not going to work because of the blank cells in-between. Instead, follow this:
- Select the top-left cell of your data (say B2)
- Click and drag the little rectangular box in vertical-scrollbar all the way down.
- Hold Shift and click on the very last cell (bottom-right)
Now that all the data is selected,
- Press F5 and click on Special
- Choose blanks. Click ok.
- This will select only the blank cells.
- Fill yellow (or other) color by clicking the fill icon and selecting the color
- Done!
Here is a quick demo of this:
Method 2: Filter approach
The above approach (selection & highlight) works fine if you care about blank cells anywhere. What if you just want to find & highlight only rows have blanks in a certain column. Say, you want to highlight all rows where comments are empty.
In this case,
- Select all data using the steps in method 1.
- Press CTRL+Shift+L to activate filters
- Keep the selection on & Filter the column you want to show only blank values
- Now fill yellow color
- Done!
Method 3: Conditional formatting approach
Both method 1 & method 2 have a draw back. If your data changes, you must clean up & highlight again.
This is where conditional formatting shines. You can tell Excel to highlight cells only if they are blank. Once some data is typed in (or copy pasted or connection refreshed), the color will go away automatically.
To set up conditional formatting,
- Select all the data
- Go to Home > Conditional Formatting > New rule
- Click on “Format only cells that contain”
- Change “Cell Value” option to “Blanks”
- Set up formatting you want by clicking on Formatting button
- Click ok and you are done!
This will automatically highlight all blank cells in your favorite color.
Oh wait, what if I want to highlight entire row if a certain column is blank?
You can use conditional formatting in such cases too. Follow these steps.
Assuming you want to check for blanks in Column G and your first data point is in G4.
- Select all the data (just data, no headers)
- Go to Home > Conditional Formatting > New rule
- Select rule type as “Use a formula…”
- Type the formula as
=LEN($G4)=0 - Set up formatting you want
- Click ok and you are done.
Wait a sec, What is the LEN($G4)=0 thing?
LEN() formula tells us what is the length of a cell’s content. So if a cell is blank, LEN(cell) would be 0.
$G4 is a mixed reference style. This way, even when conditional formatting is checking other columns, it still looks in column G to see if that is really empty.
Related: An introduction to Excel cell references.
Bonus tips:
Q) How to highlight if either of column G or H are blank?
A) =OR(LEN($G4)=0, LEN($H4)=0)
Q) How to highlight if both column G & H are blank?
A) =AND(LEN($G4)=0, LEN($H4)=0)
Go ahead and whack them blank cells.
How do you deal with blank cells?
Do you sneak up on an unsuspecting fellow passenger in an airport lounge and ask them how to deal with the blank problem? Do you manually select the blank cells and deal with them one at a time? Or do you use some ninja level trickery to fix the blanks?
Go ahead and tell me your blank story in the comments.
Fill the blanks in your Excel knowledge
If you have gaps in your Excel know-how, then you have come to right place. Use below links and fill those blanks.
18 Responses to “Best Charts to Compare Actual Values with Targets – What is your take?”
Great post. I can't vote, though, because the answer I want to put down is "it depends". As with all visualisations, you've got to take into account your audience, your purpose, technical skills, where it will be viewed, etc.
I'm with Andy: It depends. Some I would use, some I might use, some I won't touch with a barge pole.
Naturally I have comments 🙂
The dial gauge, though familiar, is less easy to read than a linear type of chart (thermometer or bullet). It's really no better than the traffic lights, because all it can really tell you is which category the point falls in: red, yellow, or green.
By the same token, pie charts are so familiar, people don't know they can't read them. Remember how long it takes kids to learn to read an analog clock?
Bullet charts don't show trends.
With any of the charts that have a filled component and a marker or ine component, it makes more sense to use the filled component (area/ column) for target, and the lines or markers for actual.
[...] Best Charts to Compare Actual values with Targets (or Budgets … [...]
I voted for #6 even though I agree with the other comments that it depends.
The majority of the votes are for the #2, thermometer chart. I still have yet to understand what happens when you are above plan/goal, which was brought up in yesterday's post.
Also, I agree with Jon in that it would be better to flip the series and make the filled part the target or goal and the line or marker the actual.
I am also a fan of using text when appropriate if the data is among other metrics in a type of dashboard. Calling it out by saying actual and % achievement is a good option.
Another "it depends" vote. Are you just looking at one or are you comparing a number of targets with actuals? You didn't include a text box. The problem with sentences is that they can get lost in a page of gray text. A text box can call attention to the numbers and line them up effectively.
I'm with Jon: "Some I would use, some I might use, some I won’t touch with a barge pole" and I'm surprised that some of your readers voted for the last group.
Jon says:
With any of the charts that have a filled component and a marker or line component, it makes more sense to use the filled component (area/ column) for target, and the lines or markers for actual.
Why does this make more sense? I like 6 the way it is, although I would use a heavy dash for the plan/target marker.
"It depends" is also my take. What I usually try to drill into my clients dashboard design is the fu ndamental difference between spot results (am I on target for this month) and long term trends.. I always try to create 3 different set of graphs to represent real perormance:
- spot results vs objectives
- cumulative results vs objectives
- long-term trend (moving average) mostly) to see where we're going
[...] Best Charts to Compare Actual Values with Targets – What is your take? (tags: excel charts) [...]
[...] Related: Charting Principles, How to compare actual values with budgets [...]
[...] Excel Charting Alternatives to compare values [...]
Jon says:
With any of the charts that have a filled component and a marker or line component, it makes more sense to use the filled component (area/ column) for target, and the lines or markers for actual.
Why does this make more sense? I like 6 the way it is, although I would use a heavy dash for the plan/target marker.
I totally agree, Bob. I would normally favour a line for the target and a column for the actual, you can see quite easily then which columns break through the line, then.
[...] best charts to compare actual values with targets — den Status mal anders zeigen, z. B. als Tacho [...]
Thermometer charts: "Not appropriate when actual values exceed targets" - this is easily solved by making the "mercury" portion a different color from the border, then you can clearly see where the expected range ends and the actual values keep going.
People seem to knock gauges quite a bit in dashboarding, but trying to show comparison of realtime data between operating sites and targets for each site can easily be done with a bank of gauges that have the optimal operating points at 12 o'clock.
The human eye is great at pattern stripping, and any deviation of a gauge from the expected 12 position will quickly register with an operator and attract his attention. Using a colour background, or meter edge, will also indicate the sensitivity of a particular site.
[…] Best charts to compare actual with target values […]
[…] Best charts to compare actual with target values […]
[…] work laptop I have a favorites folder just dedicated to Excel charts. Its got things like “Best Charts to Compare Actuals vs Targets” and “Best charts to show progress“. I love me some charts […]
I am wondering how will the plotting work, for some of the targets which may have been achieved before time. E.g. for the month of Jul the target was 226 and the actual was 219. So the chart will show a deficit in meeting the target by 7 points but what if this 7 may have been completed earlier in month of June. So ideally it not a deficit.