Congratulations to you if your job does not involve dead lines. For the rest of us, deadlines are the sole motivation for working (barring free internet & the coffee machine in 2nd floor, of course). So today, lets talk about a very familiar problem.
How to highlight overdue items in Excel?
The item can be an invoice, a to do activity, a project or anything. Here is an example of overdue, upcoming activities highlighted.
The problem – Highlight due dates in Excel
Lets say you work at Awesome inc. and you have list of to-do items as shown below.
And your problem is,
- Highlight items & due dates, subject to these conditions
- And of course start working on the items that are due
The Solution – Conditional Formatting
As you can guess, highlighting the due items is easier than actually doing them. First lets look at the solution and then learn why it works.
Lets assume that,
- The data is in the range – B6:D15, with Items (column B), Due date (C) and Completed?(D)
How to apply conditional formatting rules
We need to apply 3 rules. Follow below steps:
Highlight overdue items:
- Select the entire range (B6:D15) and from home ribbon select conditional formatting
- Click on New rule
- Select the rule type as “use a formula…”
- Write =AND($C6<=TODAY(),$D6<>”Yes”)
- And set fill color to red & font color to white.
Highlight upcoming items:
- Add one more “use a formula…” rule
- Write =AND(MEDIAN(TODAY()+1,$C6,TODAY()+7)=$C6,$D6<>”Yes”)
- And set fill color to green.
Completed items rule:
- Add another “use a formula…” rule
- Now write =$D6=”Yes”
- And set font color to dull gray from formatting button.
Now, the items will be highlighted based on the current date (TODAY) and change colors as you make progress.
Why does it work? – Explanation
At this point you may have 2 burning questions.
- Why does this work?
- How the heck am I supposed to ship 100 units of smile.
Lets talk about the solution & understand why it works.
Understanding the highlighting conditions
We have 3 conditions in our highlight table (shown above).
- If done show in dull gray color
- Not done & due in next 7 days show in orange color fill.
- If not done & already due show in red fill, white color
Rule for completed items:
The first condition is easy to check. We just see if a todo item is completed and then highlight the whole row dull gray color. So we write =$D6=”Yes” as the condition. We use $D6 (not D6) because we want Excel to look at column D (completed?) even when we are highlighting other columns (B – Item, C – Due date).
If not done & due in next week:
This is tricky. We need to check,
If completed is not yes
AND
If due date is with in next week
So we start with an AND formula. We write =AND($D6<>”Yes”
Then to check if due date is in next week, we use MEDIAN formula, like this MEDIAN(TODAY()+1,$C6,TODAY()+7)
So the condition becomes =AND(MEDIAN(TODAY()+1,$C6,TODAY()+7)=$C6,$D6<>”Yes”)
If already due:
This is another simple AND formula =AND($C6<=TODAY(),$D6<>”Yes”)
Remember:
We need to use $D6 & $C6 (instead of D6, C6) because we want Excel to check Completed & Due date columns. By removing the $ Excel will check relative columns and the conditions would not work!
More: Using relative vs. absolute references in Excel formulas
Now that we understand how this works, give me a big smile. And repeat that 99 more times & you know how to ship 100 smiles 🙂
Highlight overdue items – Video
If you are still confused about the conditional formatting rules for highlighting overdue items, check out this video. Watch it below or see it on my YouTube channel.
Download Example File
Click here to download example file. Break it apart, play with it to understand the whole highlight if due thing.
Note: I use random formulas to generate due dates & completed values. Press F9 to get fresh set of dates. Start typing your own values to remove formulas.
How do you handle dead-lines?
Do you use conditional formatting to see which items are due? I use conditional formatting for this all the time. What techniques you use? Is your dead-line criteria very different than shown above? Please share your tips & ideas with us using comments. I would love to learn from you.
Using Conditional Formatting & Dates – More Examples
Here are a few useful articles if you use Excel to track to do items & reminders.
- Conditional formatting & Dates – an introduction – Must read
- Working with date & time values in Excel – a complete overview
- Another ovredue items example – activities by employee
- Christmas shopping list in Excel: conditional formatting to track budgets, bought items etc.
- Employee shift calendar in Excel: Using dates, shift data to show busy & dull times.
- Annual goals tracker: Track goals by % completed
21 Responses to “Distinct count in Excel pivot tables”
The distinct count option works well but I have found that if I have a date field and want to group by year, month, etc. that option seems to be disabled. I need to do both, distinct count and group by year/month.
Example data; sales orders with item quantities with dates.
Challenge; sum the item quantities, count the distinct orders and group by month. How do I do this?
Perhaps that's not possible due to the grouping?
@Al... When you use data model based pivots, you cannot group values manually anymore. Why not use Excel 2016's default date grouping option? In this case we have just a few dates, so Excel is not grouping them, but if you have an year's worth of data, when you make the pivot with date in the row label area, Excel automatically groups them. If you have fewer dates or want to use your own grouping, just create a table with all dates, add columns with month, week, year etc. Then connect this table (these types of tables are usually called as calendar tables) to your data on date field as a relationship. Now you can create reports by month, quarter etc easily.
Is this the only way to do it in 2013? I find it rather cumbersome to have to create another data table listing dates with the another column for MONTH() and YEAR() to be able to summarise data for senior level...
I know people find adding calendar tables cumbersome, but it is a best practice and let's you add more layers of analysis quite easily. For example, adding analysis by weekday vs. weekend or by financial quarter or YTD calculations (you would need either Power Pivot DAX or some very carefully setup pivot table value field settings)
I had absolutely no idea this was possible. Very useful, nice work!
Doesn't work for 2010 version though (or at least not my works version)
Hi ,
The post has the following in it :
These instructions work only in Excel 2016, Office 365 and Excel 2013.
when i have 2 different Pivot tables, one without the enabled “Add this data to data model” option, and the other one with it enabled.. is there anyway i can link slicers between them?
if the answer is NO,, what to do ?
Quick note, the “Add this data to data model” option is not available for the Mac version.
perhaps outside scope of this article but I have found when I attempt to create a pivot table from an external data source (connection to a sql view) the "Add this data to data model" becomes greyed out. Anybody experienced and found a solution so I can start getting distinct count in my pivot tables?
Is there a way to still add a calculated field when using distinct count?
I found I can't change the date source after tick the " add this data to the data model", can you help to adv how to change the date source in such case?
Is there a way to update the source once you have added to the data model? I receive a new spreadsheet weekly and would like to update the connection so my tables pull from the new source.
Hi Crhis, I like how you have hulk (superhero) as your avatar. Do you know that there is a superhero in Excel too? It's Power Query. You can use it to solve your problem in a simple click. Here an intro if you need some guidance.
Powerful Introduction to Power Query
A big Thank you. It worked.
Hi, have survey data that I need to analyze but the challenge is that my key fields are showing horizontally. I tried to transpose the fields using Power Query, but unfortunately the new fields are returning same values on a pivot table despite using distinct values
How I can a do a pivot table with discount conts in some columns and then generate shor report filter pages. pls it drives crazy
Hi. Why grand total pivot of distinct count is 13? shouldn't it be 67?
Great Answer! Saved me lots of time!
Thank you!!!
Worked awesome! Thanks!!
Hi Chandoo,
I am using pivot tables for distinct count and now I need to update them with new set of data. But when I update the source data, all the columns and formatting of Pivot table disappears and I need to build it from Scratch.
Is there a possibility that I can update the source data with new rows added and also retain my pivot tables?