Whenever we talk about product ratings & customer satisfaction, 5 star ratings come to our mind. Today, let’s learn how to create a simple & elegant 5 star in-cell chart in Excel. Something like this:
A while ago, Hui showed us a fun way to create 5 star charts in Excel using bar charts with 5 star mask. I highly recommend reading that article if you want to create a regular chart version of this.
Tutorial for creating a 5 star chart
1. Meet the data
Here is our data. Very simple. First column has product names. Second column has customer rating – from 1 to 5.
2. Set up 5 blank columns for the 5 star chart
Let’s create a 5 column grid right next to our data set. This is where the in-cell 5 star chart will go. At this stage our 5 star chart looks like this:
If you haven’t guessed yet, we will be using conditional formatting > star icons to get the 5 star chart.
3. Write formulas in the 5 column grid
Now, we need to write formulas to fill up the 5 column grid. We need to formulas to return either 1, 0 or decimal values in the grid depending on the rating for that row.
So, for example, if a product has 3.30 rating, we want to print 1, 1, 1, 0.30 and 0 in 5 columns.
You can use any number of formulas to get this result. The simplest one will be IF formula.
Assuming column C (from C7) has product ratings & row 5 has running numbers 1 to 5 (from cell D5), we can use below formula to get what we want:
=IF(D$5<=$C7,1,IF(ROUNDUP($C7,0)=D$5,MOD($C7,1),0))
To understand the above formula , see this illustration.
If you like to avoid IF formulas, here is an alternative:
=MAX(($C7>=D$5)*1,MOD($C7,1))*(ROUNDUP($C7,0)>=D$5)
A challenge for you: Can you think of any other ways to write this formula?
4. Apply conditional formatting to the 5 column grid
Select the 5 column grid and apply conditional formatting (Home > Conditional Formatting > New rule)
Set up the rule as shown below:
At this stage, our report looks like this:
5. Adjust column width and borders
Once the formatting is applied, just clean up the report by adjusting column width (set it to 24 px) and add horizontal borders only.
And our product rating report is ready.
Download in-cell 5 star chart template
Please click here to download the in-cell 5 star chart workbook. It also contains a variation of the 5 star chart made with data bars & 5 star mask. Check out both examples to understand how they work.
More in-cell chart tutorials & techniques
In-cell charts are a powerful & lightweight way to visualize your data. Check out below tutorials to one up your awesomeness.
Create in-cell charts with markers for target / average- In-cell sales funnel charts
- Suicides vs. Murders – story told with in-cell charts
- Another 5 star chart (plus show details on click)
- Exploring survey results in interactive dot-plot chart
How would you visualize customer ratings in Excel?
While 5 star charts are traditional, they dumb-down the data. Can you think of other fun ways to visualize customer / product rating data? Please share your thoughts & implementations in the comments.
24 Responses to “10 Supercool UI Improvements in Excel 2010”
The best improvement by far is the Collapse Ribbon ^ button !
Kind of a shame that some of the best improvements are actually returns to old functionality. One thing I don't like is that to get to recent files I need to do an extra click after File - apart from Save As, that's why I'm usually in the File menu. I like the sparkline options, though they are still as not fully featured as some of the free and pay options out there.
The collapse button for the ribbon menu is good news. Can you make the ribbon menus stick too?
Nine improvements, not ten. You can also select multiple objects in 2007. Click on the Find & Select item at the far right of the Home tab, and the dropdown looks remarkably like your 2010 screenshot.
@Jon.. Thank you. Dumb me, I somehow thought we couldnt select objects in Excel 2007. Just saw the "select menu" and it is there. I have corrected the post and removed the point. I have added the "you can make your own ribbons" instead. Thanks once again.
@Arti: what do you mean by make ribbons stick?
@Alex: May be it is my installation, but when I go to "File menu" I see "recent files" by default.
For example, if I am working with one of the contextual ribbon menus (Pivot tables, Drawing/Chart etc), as soon as I click away from the selected object, the menu tabs vanish. If I click on the object again immediately, then Excel will remember what I was looking at, but if I wander away and click on a Pivot, then back again on the Chart, the menus will 'appear' but not get activated, thereby causing much annoyance and additional clicking.
I want to "pin" the whole menu (not invididual commands) somehow, so that I can have the menu there for the length of the time I am working with graphics. Excel 2003 used to have the Drawing toolbar you could detach and hover while you were working, but this functionality disappeared in Excel 2007.
My thought was Excel should just allow a 'pin', similar to the Recently Opened files menu, for the Ribbon Menus as well. If I have not selected any Drawing object, the commands can be greyed out, but I want the menu as a whole to 'stick'.
@Arti... I think MS solved this problem differently. When I select a pivot and go to "design" tab Excel 2010 remembers this and automatically takes me to "design" tab when I reselect the pivot.
Apart from this you can also define your own ribbon with all the things you normally do. See the above article (I have added this after Jon's comments)
Nice feature. About time for a upgrade for MS Office
Oh... okay. That might be a start. I'd probably just copy-paste the Drawing tab haha. Thanks. I'll definitely give Excel 2010 a try.
Btw - have you considered getting into / gotten into the world of Excel as it meets SharePoint?
Actually, the replacement new thing is probably better than all the rest. One thing that the designers of the Office 2007 ignored was allowing regular users to customize their own interface. Office 2010's interface was expanded in this way to address the huge uproar.
Is there still a limit on how many things you can add to the QAT bar? (I'm too lazy to look myself.)
@Jeff.. it seems to take quite a few, but only shows one line and gives a little arrow button at the end. (summary: shucks!)
The best thing is you can edit the ribbon directly from excel, so now i can create my own bar with just the things I use regularly!
One of the annoying things in 07 for me is the Add-Ins menu bar - in 03 I could keystroke directly to menu add ins.. In 07 I needed an extra keystroke just to activate the add-in menu, then the keystrokes as normal.. Hope this marek sense..
John -
If you remember the old Excel 2003 Alt-key shortcuts, you can still use them in 2007. To get to the Add-In dialog:
Alt-T-I
Dear Arti & Chandoo
Seen your comments over some issues. Hope you are form India, gone through your comment expecting a pin to command it as a whole, great, hope if someone out of MS have read it, it may be kept in mind while the next R & D of Office Ver. 16
Just incase someone forgot CTRL+F1 will collapse the ribbon.
[...] was pleasantly surprised when I ran Microsoft Excel 2010 for first time. It felt smooth, fast, responsive and looked great on my [...]
I like the sparklines, and the ability to modify the charts
How do you get rid of the advertisment on the right hand side? If you upgrade then will it take off the ads?
Once again Microsoft has re-decorated the Office and we are NOT pleased!
The graphics object selector can be found in the Home ribbon under Find & Select, Select Objects near the bottom of the drop down. You can make it part of the Quick Access toolbar by right click over it and selecting Add to Quick Access toolbar.
The graphics "cursor" will now appear on the mini-toolbar at the top left of the window.
How to get rid of "Add-Ins" button in Backstage (File)" menu by means of XML code, i.e. to hide, to delete or to disable this button?
This button is usually situated in the Backstage menu between "Help" and "Options" buttons.
Vladimir, did you ever get an answer to your question?
I am tying to customize the ribbon UI for a file using XML, and this is precisely the piece I can't figure out. I can hide other tabs, remove items from QAT and backstage - all except the options that are showing up under add-ins in backstage. If there is an XML syntax for referencing this thing and making it invisible, I cannot find it.
Hey, nice tutorial. Please check my video tutorial on similar topic at the below link and provide your comments:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TeIFc0jYjpA