Let’s take a whirlwind trip to coolest little capital – Wellington. It is a windy place, so hold on to your hats and spreadsheets.
Almost everyone who spends more than 2 days in Wellington would agree that it is a windy place. But how windy is Welly? In this two part series, we will use Power Query, Excel charts and coffee to answer that question.
But, first let’s start with a joke.
What happens when you throw a boomerang in Frank Kitts Park?
You will have to buy another one, coz you are not getting that one back.
Extracting the wind data
In order to understand how windy Wellington is, we need to get average wind speeds by day for last several days. Let’s get the data for last 2+ years (ie from 1 Jan 2016 to 21 Feb 2018).
There are many places where you can collect latest wind data. But when it comes to historical wind data, surprisingly few resources are available. We can use The National Climate database – CliFlo, to gather wind data. But the interface is confusing and I could only locate gust speeds, rather than average wind speeds over time.
We can use wunderground.com to fetch weather data for up to 13 months at a time.
But we need data for almost 26 months.
Very simple, we can query wunderground twice (or thrice), once per each year.
The historical data query URL looks like this:
https://www.wunderground.com/history/airport/NZWN/2016/1/1/CustomHistory.html?dayend=31&monthend=12&yearend=2016&req_city=&req_state=&req_statename=&reqdb.zip=&reqdb.magic=&reqdb.wmo=
All we had to do is, change 2016 to 2017 & 2018 to get respective data.
The actual data set will be a web page. But we can use power query to extract the portion of page that contains weather information.
On to Power Query – Building our Weather Data Extractor
Note: This is a slightly advanced tutorial on PQ. If you are a beginner, start with Introduction to Power Query and work thru examples on PQ tag page before reading any more.
Getting data from the web – building URL in parts
Open Excel and go to Data > New Query > From Other Sources > Web
For Power BI, this would be Edit Queries > New Source > Web
Switch to “Advanced” mode and enter the URL as parts like below. We will switch the 2016 part to parameters soon, so we could get data for any year easily.
In the navigation pane, select “Table 1” which is the weather table.
Set up a parameter for Year
How would we get data for 2017 or 2018? Simple, we use parameters. These are like variables which can be plugged in to any part of your Power Query process.
In Power Query Editor, go to Home > Manager Parameters > New Parameter and call it Year. Enter the default value as 2016.
Now, go back and edit the source settings for the query and replace 2016s with parameter Year.
Cleaning the weather table
Turns out the weather data table is not clean. Although there are 366 days in 2016 (leap year), Wunderground adds headers for each month. So we end up with 378 rows (excluding the header). Each header contains month name and repeat of all the column names. We can extract the month name & combine that with date and year parameter to create the date for each row.
Here is a quick illustration of what we need to do.
But first, rename the very first column
Notice the first column? It is called as 2016. This is ok if we are interested in just 1 year of data. But if we re-run this query with Parameter=2017, our column heading will change. If you have dabbled with Power Query a few times, you will quickly realize that PQ will get in to a nasty fit anytime column headers change and impact downstream steps.
Simple, we shall rename it as FirstCol.
When you apply the new name, PQ will write this M instruction.
#”Renamed Columns”= Table.RenameColumns(Data1,{{“2016”, “First col”}})
This is not a fool proof solution, as when we change parameter to 2017, there won’t be a 2016 column in that new table.
So, instead, we can ask PQ to rename first column of the table.
You can do this by:
- Note: You need “Formula Bar”. Enable “Formula Bar” by clicking View > Formula bar. This way you can actually see all the M code PQ is cranking up whenever you perform some actions on your data.
- Click on fx button on the formula bar to insert a step. Simply type = Table.RenameColumns(Data1,{{Table.ColumnNames(Data1){0}, “First col”}})
- Press Enter
- Bingo, you have renamed the first column of your query to “First col”. This has no reference to 2016 or any year, so it should work on any table you fetch from that weather data page.
Cleaning the weather data – steps
Just follow these steps to clean the weather data.
- Add a custom column called Month and write this formula = if Text.Length([First col]) > 2 then [First col] else null
- Select Month column and Fill Down (Transform > Fill >Down)
- Select First col and change its type to whole number. This will make all month names as Error
- Remove errors from First col (Right click on column header and choose Remove Errors)
- Add a custom column called Date with the formula = Text.From([First col])&”-“&[Month]&”-“&Year
- Change this column to date type.
- Keep only Temp. (°C)2, Wind (km/h), Wind (km/h)2, Wind (km/h)3, Events, Date columns and remove all other
- Rename first four columns to Avg. Temp, Wind Max, Avg. Wind, Wind Gust
At this stage we have one year of wind and temperature data for Wellington. Time to create getWeatherData() function.
Making getWeatherData function in Power Query
Now that we have a parameterized query, just right click on the query and choose “Convert to Function”
PQ will build the function that can take year as input and return a table of weather data for that year (provided Wunderground.com co-operates)
Now, we just need to run this function three times, once each for 2016, 2017 and 2018 to get all the data.
Go back to Excel
Save your queries, but don’t load them yet. If PQ prompts about data load, select “Connection only” and jump to Excel.
- Create a table with 3 rows and type 2016, 2017 and 2018 in that. Call this table Years.
- Load this table to Power Query (Data > From Table)
- Go to Add Column > Invoke Custom Function and invoke getWeatherData function for each year.
- Expand the weather data tables.
- Done!
At this stage, we have data for all 3 years. You can add some data clean up steps if you want. But all the wind & temperature data is here for us to analyze and visualize.
Download Example Workbook
Click here to download the Wellington Wind workbook. As you can see, I have added few more steps in PQ to clean up the data and include a “Is it windy?” conditional column.
Please note that this workbook is designed in Excel 2016. It may not work in older versions of Power Query. You can replicate most of the steps. Try doing it so that you will learn more about Power Query.
In the next part – Wind in Wellington – few visualizations
In the next part of this tutorial, we will build some visualizations to understand how windy Wellington gets and what is the best time to enjoy the beautiful outdoors.
Stay tuned.
How are you using Power Query? Please post about your power query escapades in the comments section. Also tell me how you went about re-creating the steps in this tutorial. I am all ears.
Why there are no undercover cops in Wellington? Their cover was always getting blown. That is why.
31 Responses to “Beautiful Budget vs. Actual chart to make your boss love you”
Would be considerably easier just to have a table with the variance shown.
On Step 3, how do you "Add budget and actual values to the chart again"?
There are a few ways to do it.
Easy:
1) Copy just the numbers from both columns (Select, CTRL+C)
2) Select the chart and hit CTRL+V to paste. This adds them to chart.
Traditional:
1) Right click on chart and go to "select data..."
2) From the dialog, click on "Add" button and add one series at a time.
One more way to accomplish it is just select the columns into chart. Press Ctrl+C and then press Ctrl+V
Regards
Neeraj Kumar Agarwal
Unfortunately, this doesn't seem to work for me in Excel 2010. The "Var 1" and "Var 2" columns cannot combine two fonts to display the symbol and the figure side-by-side.
Secondly, there is no option to Click on “Value from cells” option when formatting the label options. The only options provided are Series Name, Category Name or Value.
@TheQ47... the emoji font also has normal English letters, so if you use that font, then you should be ok. I am assuming your computer doesn't have that font or hasn't been upgraded for emoji support.
Reg. Excel 2010, you can manually link each label to a cell value. Just select one label at a time (click on labels, wait a second, click on an individual label) and press = and link it to the label var 1 or var 2.
I am using excel 2010, please explain how to apply Step 12
Regards
Neeraj Kumar Agarwal
Hi Neeraj,
"Value from cells" option is only available in Excel 2013 or above. In older versions, you have to manually adjust the label value by linking each label seperately.
Read this please: https://chandoo.org/wp/change-data-labels-in-charts/
Sir, you are just awesome.
Your creativity has no limit.
Regards
Neeraj Kumar Agarwal
Hi Chandoo,
I just found your website, and really love it. It helps me a lot to be an Excel expert 😉
Currently I am facing with a problem at step 11:
Var1 Var2
D30%
A5%
B0%
B4%
B7%
C10%
C13%
D27%
I42%
Though at mapping table, I used windings, here formula uses calibra. How I can change it? I am able to change only the whole cell. In this case numbers will be Windings too.
Thanks for your help!
Hi Mariann... Welcome to Chandoo.org and thanks for your comment.
If you wanted to use symbols from wingdings and combine them with % numbers, then you need to setup two labels. One with symbol, in wingdings font and another with value in normal font. Just add the same series again to the chart, make it invisible, add labels. You may need to adjust the alignment / position of label so everything is visible.
[…] firs article explains how you can enhance your charts with symbols. You can simply insert any supported symbol into your data and charts. To some extend you can […]
You're a good person, thank you to share your knowledge with us, I will try to do in my work
Great visualization of variance. My question is that is this possible in powerbi?
How would you go about it?
HELLO, WHY CANT I FIND VALUES FOR LABELS IN EXCEL 2013
Dear chanddo sir,
What to do if we have dynamic range for Chart. How this will work. can you able to make the same thing works on dynamic range.
Sir Chandoo,
Good Day!
First, I'd like to say that I am very grateful for your work and for sharing all these things with us.
I tried to do this chart but it seems that the symbols don't work with text (abs(var%),"0%") unless we keep the Windings font style.
The problem is, it converts the text into symbol as well and you wont see the 0% anymore. I'm using Windows 7.
WOW - Segoe UI Emoji
This is the greatest discovery for me this month 🙂 Thanks for sharing.
Here's my two-cents:
https://wmfexcel.com/2019/02/17/a-compelling-chart-in-three-minutes/
Sir This is awesome chart, and very easy to made because of your way to explain is very simple , everyone can do. Thank you
one problem i am facing, I hv made this chart , but when i am inserting data table to chart it is showing two times , how can i resolve this
in this chart when i am adding new month data for example first i made this chart jan to mar but when i add data for the apr month graphs updated automatically but labels are missing for that new month
Hi Renuka,
Please make sure the formulas for labels are also calculated for extra months. Just drag down the series and set label range to appropriate address.
So I am playing with the Actual chart here - but amounts are bigger than your - you have 600 as Budget - my budget is 104,000 - is there a way to shorten that I am unaware of
thank you - I LOVE YOUR SITE
Thanks for the tips and tricks on Excel. In the Planned versus Actual chart examples, you use multiple values (ex. multiple Categories in above). How can this be done when we have only 1 set of values? For example if I have only this:
Planned Actual
SOW Budget 417480 367551
How can I create a single bar chart like the one above?
Thank you Chandoo.
This one is just perfect for my Quarterly Review presentation on Operational Budget against Actual Performance for the Hospital I'm currently working with.
Just Subscribed today (10 minutes ago)
Is there a way to make the table of data into a pivot table to be able to add a slicer for the graph due to many different categories and months?
Hi, I tried to modify you template with something appropriate for me, and I found a problem. this template was modified by me started with excel 2010, then 2016 and finally 2019. Same thing - somehow appear an error - or didn't show the emoticons for positive percentage or doubled the emoticons for some rows. I suspect to be from excel. if is need it I can sand you my xlsx for study. Please help if you can.
Hi Chandoo,
Could you please check the Var Formula in Step1. You have mentioned budget-actual and when i did this i got different values but when reversed like actual-budget i got the actual value what you have demonstrated in step1.
Please share your view.
This is a great chart (budget vs. actual). However, in trying recreate it, I cannot color in the UP Down bars individually, and they all become formatted with the same color. I'm using Office 365. Look forward to the feedback.
Thanks.
Dan
pls explain in detail step 7
While in the Excel sheet you have used following formula for Var
Var = Actual - Budget
But
in the note, you have written
Var = Budget - Actual
Good Presentation and Data information.thank you so much chandoo.