When analyzing business data like sales, shop visits or productivity, one of the questions managers always ask is,
What is the best month / week ?
To answer this question, we need to make a chart that looks like this:
How to highlight best week or best month in a chart?
Today, lets learn how to highlight portions of such charts that correspond to best week or best month.
First, an important rule
To highlight data: If you have all the numbers for this chart in a range A1:A100, and you want to highlight the maximum value (or top 10 values), you use conditional formatting.
But with charts: there is no such thing as conditional formatting. So we must imitate the effect. This is done by creating extra series of data (for best week, best month etc.) and formatting it accordingly.
So the rule is To highlight a portion of chart, we need to create another series for that portion and format it the way we want.
Step 1: Create a regular line chart from your data
Lets assume our original data is like this:
Select it and create a line chart to depict the trend of values.
Step 2: Calculate Weeknum
Weeknum will have the week number for each date. This is calculated by =weeknum(date)&”-“&year(date)
Step 3: Calculate Best week portion
For our analysis, lets assume that best week is the week with highest total sales. To do this:
- Add one more column, lets call it weekly total. In this, sum up the total for each week. The formula =SUMIF(weeknum, current-weeknum, values) will give this.
- Now, find the maximum of this column using =MAX(weekly-total)
- Add one more column – best week. This will have NA() for all values except the maximum week. The formula for this would be =if(weekly-total=max-weekly-total,value,na())
Step 4: Add the best week series to chart
Copy the best week column and paste it in your original chart.
At this stage, our chart has 2 series:
- Original line corresponding to all dates
- Best week line corresponding to only best 7 dates
Format this new series in any way you want. And your chart highlights best week.
Step 5: Follow similar process for Best month
To highlight best month, you need to calculate month, monthly total, max-monthly-total & best month values. Once they are ready, just add the best-month values to the chart and you are done!
Calculations Explained:
See this illustration to understand how the calculations for best week & month work.
Download Example Workbook
Click here to download the example workbook & play with it. The workbook contains 2 charts.
- Best week & month highlighted
- Best week & month highlighted along with drop lines
Examine the formulas & resources section of download file to learn more.
Do you highlight portions of charts?
Highlighting a portion of chart is very useful to draw user’s attention. I do this all the time in my dashboards & reports. Unfortunately, there is no automatic way to do this. So we resort to techniques like this.
What about you? Do you highlight portions of charts? What techniques do you use? Please share your ideas & tips using comments.
Also, read more on Dynamic Charts, Excel Tables & Interactive Highlighting in charts.
22 Responses to “Master Excel 2007 Ribbon with this Free Learning Guide”
Thank you, kind sir. Well done with the baby making.
I cannot get signed up for your newsletter. I tied both this email address and churchill2001@hotmail.com. never a response.
I cannot get signed up for your newsletter. I tied both this email address and churchill2001_at_hotmail_dot_com. never a response for either attempt.
@Doug, it shows that your email address is pending verification. Can you check your inbox (and may be spam folder too) for an email from me? The subject will be "Activate Subscription to Get your Free Excel Tips E-book"
[...] PPS: If you are struggling with ribbon, you should check out ribbon learning guide. [...]
Very Useful Info..Keep it up..
@Ajay.. you are welcome 🙂
how do u download microsoft excel for free?
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/default.aspx
Select Office
Free Trial
[...] Excel 2010 UI looks considerably better and less stressful than 2007. The colors are dull and subtle. The icons don’t call for attention unless you want to do something. The menus / ribbons feel smoother and slicker. [Learn to use Excel Ribbon with this Free e-Book] [...]
I can't open this pdf. I get the error message:
You do not have the required license to open this file.
Please request a license from the creator of the file, and add it using the license manager and they try opening it again.
What gives??
I downloaded the file again and it worked this time. Strange. (First file was 116 KB, second was 1644 KB... ???)
[...] More ribbon goodness | Free e-book to learn Excel Ribbon [...]
Hi Chandoo,
thanks for sharing your Excel 2007 learning experience with us; unfortunately the link to the pdf of the free Excel 2007 learning guide seems broken: my Acrobate Readers flags: "Unkown file type or corrupte data".
Have a nice day
Michael
well done this is great
Can somebody just provide a link the classic TAB exportedUI files for MS Office 2003 for us to use in office 2007/2010?. searching online, everybody just wnats to make a buck online with silly Classic Tab installers which do nothing more than inport exportedUI files for you.
Don't give me a ribbon how to guide, just give me free exportedUI files. I should not have to pay anyone for this, it is free XML, MS should have included this to begin with.
thanks
Dear.
There are a set of debit values and a set ot credit values in a column. I want a vba code by whcich the debit value plus a single / multiple credit value is zero that needs to be marked .
finally i will come to know out of the avaibale debits which cannot be used the with avilable credits either single or multiple values.
If multiple matching sets are available let it take the 1st or the 2nd one its not an issue.
Column A Ref
-1000 A
-5000 B
-8000 C
800 A
100 A
100 A
2000 B
3000 B
13000
15000
hi...
how to make this add-ins and display in ribbon... check this sample : http://www.cprsoft.com/GCDemo01.htm
thank you sir...
Please tell me format painter short cut key In excel ?
Thanks In Advance
thankfully.likeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
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I appreciate this, because I didn't do much works in my project management studies using gantt chart. As of now are have now learned some advancement.