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.














13 Responses to “Using pivot tables to find out non performing customers”
To avoid the helper column and the macro, I would transpose the data into the format shown above (Name, Year, Sales). Now I can show more than one year, I can summarize - I can do many more things with it. ASAP Utilities (http://www.asap-utilities.com) has a new experimental feature that can easily transpose the table into the correct format. Much easier in my opinion.
David
Of course with alternative data structure, we can easily setup a slicer based solution so that everything works like clockwork with even less work.
David, I was just about to post the same!
In Contextures site, I remember there's a post on how to do that. Clearly, the way data is layed out on the very beginning is critical to get the best results, and even you may thinkg the original layout is the best way, it is clearly not. And that kind of mistakes are the ones I love ! because it teaches and trains you to avoid them, and how to think on the data structure the next time.
Eventually, you get to that place when you "see" the structure on the moment the client tells you the request, and then, you realized you had an ephiphany, that glorious moment when data is no longer a mistery to you!!!
Rgds,
Chandoo,
If the goal is to see the list of customers who have not business from yearX, I would change the helper column formula to :
=IF(selYear="all",sum(C4:M4),sum(offset(C4:M4,,selyear-2002,1,columns(C4:M4)-selyear+2002)))This formula will sum the sales from Selected Year to 2012.
JMarc
If you are already using a helper column and the combox box runs a macro after it changes, why not just adjust the macro and filter the source data?
Regards
I gotta say, it seems like you are giving 10 answers to 10 questions when your client REALLY wants to know is: "What is the last year "this" customer row had a non-zero Sales QTY?... You're missing the forest for the trees...
Change the helper column to:
=IFERROR(INDEX(tblSales[[#Headers],[Customer name]:[Sales 2012]],0,MATCH(9.99999999999999E+307,tblSales[[#This Row],[Customer name]:[Sales 2012]],1)),"NO SALES")
And yes, since I'm matching off of them for value, I would change the headers to straight "2002" instead of "Sales 2002" but you sort the table on the helper column and then and there you can answer all of your questions.
Hi thanks for this. Just can't figure out how you get the combo box to control the pivot table. Can you please advise?
Cheers
@Kevin.. You are welcome. To insert a combo box, go to Developer ribbon > Insert > form controls > combo box.
For more on various form controls and how to use them, please read this: http://chandoo.org/wp/2011/03/30/form-controls/
Thanks Chandoo. But I know how to insert a combobox, I was more referring to how does in control the year in the pivot table? Or is this obvious? I note that if I select the Selected Year from the PivotTable Field List it says "the field has no itens" whereas this would normally allow you to change the year??
Thanks again
worked it out thanks...
when =data!Q2 changes it changes the value in column N:N and then when you do a refreshall the pivottable vlaues get updated
Still not sure why PivotTable Field List says “the field has no itens"?? I created my own pivot table and could not repeat that.
Hi, I put the sales data in range(F5:P19) and added a column D with the title 'Last sales in year'. After that, in column D for each customer, the simple formula
=2000+MATCH(1000000,E5:P5)
will provide the last year in which that particular customer had any sales, which can than easily be managed by autofilter.
Somewhat longer but perhaps a bit more solid (with the column titles in row 4):
=RIGHT(INDEX($F$4:$P$19,1,MATCH(1000000,F5:P5)),4)
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